IBM had the right idea back in April 1964 when it announced the System/360 mainframe, and it even had a name that reflected its understanding of what customers wanted. The idea was that a single line of machines, using different processor and storage technologies, would be united by levels of abstraction that would allow them to all run the same applications, but just on a different scale and with different price points.

It is a lesson that IBM quickly forgot when it bifurcated its market in 1969 with the advent of the System/3 minicomputer, and I still believe that IBM

There’ll be no confetti dropping from the ceiling or champagne corks popping, but IBM‘s announcement that Rational Open Access: RPG Edition becomes available as a free PTF beginning February 14 deserves a little fanfare. Here’s a technology with a lot of promise, the native GUI interface as some call it, that’s finally available without blood, sweat, and tears poured into the ordering process. And, even better, without any licensing charges.

The PTFs are the short-term solution to getting RPG OA into the hands of those who have complained to IBM for that past two years. By May, RPG OA

For the past two years RPG Open Access technology has been available, yet it remained unseen and even unheard by a great many people in the IBM i community. A combination of low visibility–partly related to a few ISVs taking the lead on some projects, while onlookers waited to see how the projects turned out–and limited budgets, which put a lot of IT and other expenditures on the skids. Application modernization projects have sprouted here and there, but let’s just say it’s not burning down the house. It’s at a point, however, where we should see a green-screen fade.

Another

If you want to become successful, every few years someone will write a book telling you how. Just follow these three steps, develop these seven habits, add stock options and voila, you too can be a screaming success. Or, if that doesn’t work, it helps to have the good fortune to be born to rich, connected parents.

Success is all well and good, but given the number of “successes” who were once thought to be shining stars in the corporate firmament but turned out to be cheap fireworks instead, it’s high time someone paid homage to the qualities that

Rocket Software consolidated its position in the market for terminal emulation software last week when it acquired Zephyr Development Corp., a Houston, Texas, company that developed the PASSPORT line of terminal emulation and integration solutions for accessing and modernizing applications running on z/OS, IBM i, Unix, and OpenVMS servers. It was the second IBM i-related acquisition for Rocket in a month, and sends a strong signal of support for the platform.

Zephyr was a small, feisty company that delighted in taunting its larger competitors in the mature terminal emulation space and pressing customers to question the value they get

Don’t forget to mention COBOL programmers on the iSeries still writing green screens!

I always hear about the RPGers, but what about us COBOLers? Are there more out there? If you hear of anyone looking for a COBOL programmer, I’ve got 33 years experience in IT. I have about six years of experience writing RPG in the 1990s, too, but prefer COBOL. Been on the iSeries (AS/400) since it was introduced back in the 1980s. Glad to hear green screen is still alive and well elsewhere!

–Mary

Ah, Mary. I shoulda known better. Mea culpa.

–TPM

I always read

Got a head full of ideas, but no job or maybe the wrong job? Maybe this will help. It’s a listing of staffing priorities for 2012 compiled by the career data-mining specialists at Dice, with info based on data scooped from the brains of 1,200 tech-focused hiring managers and recruiters.

Many of you IBM i and RPG propellerheads aren’t going to like this, but number one on the list of skills that lead to jobs is Java. I know . . . next to the notice of mandatory attendance at another meeting where reductions in healthcare benefits are discussed,

It’s a new year and a new first quarter and a new and somewhat challenging economy in North America, and therefore IBM is offering financing deals in the United States and Canada.

Last week, Big Blue rolled out a zero percent financing program called Fast Start Financing that, as the name suggests and as the company has done many times in the past, offers cheap financing to customers. In this case, the deal is available for customers looking to acquire Power Systems servers (running any of the operating systems supported, including IBM i, AIX, and Linux) and on various storage

It sure does look like IBM wants you to stop using Query/400 or any one of a number of third-party query tools that run in conjunction with the DB2 for i relational database at the heart of the IBM i operating system.

For the second time in just a little over two years, Big Blue has taken the mighty red pen for cost-cutting and chopped it in half with a katana and then use the sword on prices for selected features in the DB2 Web Query software development kit.

Back in October 2010, IBM sliced selected DB2 Web Query

Here at The Four Hundred, we search far and wide and look high and low for things that matter to your Power Systems-IBM i shop. We may wander off on a tangent or two here and there as we think about the IT market (especially in the As I See It and Mad Dog 21/21 columns, which have this wandering as their purpose), but we take pride in the fact that we always bring it on home.

I don’t mean to pick. Really I don’t. But it really bothers me when IBM completely forgets about the IBM i operating