There are a lot of headwinds working against the IBM i platform, including a high up-front cost, a legacy perception, and executives who automatically default to X64 technology with technology decisions. These are all external challenges that the IBM i community can’t do much about. But there’s one headwind that’s internal to the IBM i community: A growing lack of personnel with the requisite IBM i skills.

One company that’s transitioning off the IBM i platform due, in part, to a lack of skills is PRGX. For decades, the Atlanta, Georgia, company used IBM‘s midrange server to automate many

In the market for hosted high availability? There’s a new IBM i offering now available from Iowa managed service provider (MSP) LightEdge Solutions, which teamed up recently with Vision Solutions to put MIMIX and iTERA Availability on its private Power Cloud.

LightEdge Solutions is a 20-year old IT services firm based in Des Moines that hosts and manages systems on behalf of its clients. The company currently has two data centers, including a 20,000 square-foot facility in Altoona, Iowa, and another located in the underground “SubTropolis” business complex in Kansas City, Missouri. The company is currently building two additional

Dynamic Solutions International, a company known for its line of virtual tape library (VTL) systems designed specifically for IBM i shops, just released virtualized backup and recovery software pre-built to handle deduplication, replication and encryption. It’s called DSI Restore and it’s implemented onto a VMware environment. DSI says it new backup and recovery virtual appliance is aimed at companies that find traditional cloud-based solutions cost prohibitive.

DSI considers the backup and recovery appliance on VMware as an opportunity for IBM i shops to save money compared to the cost of adding Linux/VIOS partitions to a separate Power Systems backup

Every year, Panorama Consulting comes out with a list of the top ERP systems and vendors. The list for 2016 has the usual suspects in it, as well as a decent representation of ERP systems that run on the IBM i platform.

While there’s no hard data on the matter, anecdotal evidence suggests that enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems are the primary type of application that customers run on IBM i servers. Whether companies develop their own software or buy a shrink-wrapped product from a vendor, most companies that run the IBM i server bought it to run a core

Cybersecurity played a major role in the run-up to yesterday’s presidential election, as Russian hackers leaked private communications and attempted to influence the outcome of the election. They weren’t successful, largely because elections remain mostly a manual affair in United States. But it did serve as a reminder of the need to protect critical American institutions in both the cyber and physical worlds.

In a recent report, the Department of Homeland Security identified 16 infrastructure sectors that are vital to the safety, security, and health of the United States and its people. You’ll find sectors you’d expect to find there,