• Rocket Gits Hip to Emerging IBM i Tech

  January 31, 2018 Alex Woodie

  When it comes to managing traditional IBM i development environments, Rocket Software has its bases covered. But as younger technologies and younger developers find their way onto the platform, Rocket found that it had some work to do to ensure that DevOps – or application lifecycle management (ALM), if you like — runs as smoothly as its enterprise customers expect. That’s the case with the vendor’s announcement today around Git.

  Rocket Software today announced that it’s now supporting Git with the Aldon Lifecycle Manager (Enterprise Edition), the company’s ALM product for open systems environments like Windows, Linux, and Unix. The …

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• Four Hundred Monitor, January 31

  January 31, 2018 Dan Burger

  It is important for all decision makers familiarize themselves with current and emerging IT landscapes. Now is the best time to be thinking through future scenarios. A favorite saying of one of my mentors is: “In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing you can do is the wrong thing and the worst thing you can do is nothing.”

  This week, Monitor hooks up readers with articles that cover important IT trends, the avoidance of training failures, the changing roles of CIOs, and the legal dangers that lurk within …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 20, Number 4, The Spectre Of Meltdowns

  January 31, 2018 Doug Bidwell

  As we have pointed out, the Spectre and Meltdown speculative execution security vulnerabilities have been classified by IBM’s Product Security Incident Response Team (PSIRT) as having a “High Severity” level.

  This week’s update is somewhat chilling. IBM announced additional PTFs to be fully protected, meaning you have to do both, and also do the firmware fix.

  But wait, there’s more. . . . The HIPER and Security groups for each release were re-released over the weekend, but only the first of each set below is included in the Security group. So, if you order and download the latest HIPERs …

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• LUG Talks About IBM i Priorities

  January 29, 2018 Alex Woodie

  The Large User Group (LUG) held its first meeting of the year last week at the IBM lab in Rochester, Minnesota. While LUG members use the IBM i platform differently than your average mid-sized company, their experiences, concerns, and vision for the future of the platform are relevant to the community as a whole. We caught up with two LUG members last week to get the low down on the i tech.

  The LUG is a private organization that keeps the identities of its members confidential. Because the overall IBM i ecosystem is relatively small, the LUG requested that IT …

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• LightEdge Shops A “True Cloud” To IBM i Users

  January 29, 2018 Dan Burger

  IBM i-based cloud computing is not your average everyday IBM i environment. And it’s different from managed services that are sometimes called hosted services. True cloud – a term that’s being used to describe virtualized computing, storage, and networking available with utility-style flexible pricing – is still a rare sight with IBM i. But Roger Mellman knows where you can find one. He built it for LightEdge Solutions, a services provider with an edge on the typical managed service provider.

  IBM first approached LightEdge five years ago about building an IBM i-based cloud, Mellman, the director of enterprise …

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• Guru: Sorting In Teraspace

  January 29, 2018 Jon Paris

  In an earlier tip, Teraspace To The Rescue, I discussed how to use teraspace in RPG to permit the storage and manipulation of data that requires more storage than RPG’s 16MB limit. In this tip I am going to discuss how such data can be sorted. Hint: SORTA won’t work!

  Before I get to that though, there is one thing I should mention. In that original tip I said: “For reasons I have never understood, DEALLOC will not null your pointer. So it is a good idea to do it yourself. . . .” IBM’s Barbara Morris pointed out, …

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• IBM Winds Down Yet More Older Power Systems Features

  January 29, 2018 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  It is amazing to me that IBM stops selling specific Power Systems and features in such a gradual and what looks like a haphazard fashion. It seems to take forever to kill off older product lines. It may be more a function of what supplies Big Blue has in the barn than with some kind of orderly, sensible withdrawal from marketing of prior generations of gear.

  The upshot is that it is very hard to figure out what IBM is and is not selling, and when it will stop selling particular features. And because IBM does not usually provide the …

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• Reader Feedback On IBM i Strategy: Technology Choices And The Vendor Ecosystem

  January 29, 2018 Dan Burger

  Hi Dan:

  While Steve Will’s vision for 5 to 15 years out is encouraging and morale-building, it’s not a commitment to the i marketplace – it’s called a “statement of direction” for a reason! I’ll nod in agreement that it’s all good while hoping IBM delivers not only on AI but on enhanced “primitive” processes necessary to make AI useful, if not valuable.

  AI is based on events, transactions, and business rules. Without the primitives — robust and high-performance database technology; extreme hardware/software platform stability; and programming technologies that support the development, testing, deployment, and maintenance of complex business rules …

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• IBM i Strategy: Technology Choices And The Vendor Ecosystem

  January 24, 2018 Dan Burger

  When Steve Will talks about IBM strategy for the future, he’s not talking about next week or even next year. His view is five, 10, and 15 years into the future. That’s where the planning is being done. The next few years are past the planning stage and into the development stage. That’s a general statement of direction. Adjustments happen within shorter development timeframes.

  Will, the IBM i chief architect, was at the OCEAN user group meeting last week in Orange County, California, making his case for the future of IBM i. His presentation was titled “IBM i in the …

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• Transforming The Art Of Code And The Face Of IBM i

  January 24, 2018 Philippe Magne

  (Sponsored Content)  ARCAD has been in business for 25 years, and we have done a lot of technical innovation over those years. We started our business with traditional software change management, on the software change management at that time, which is the combination of having a set of tools to manage developer work and then to transfer from development to test to production. At that time, of course, it was only for OS/400 and then IBM i production platforms. There are some customers with many production machines, but the typical case involves two machines: one for development and …

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