• Will Security As A Service Relieve The Pressure On IBM i Shops?

  January 17, 2018 Dan Burger

  Security is all about control. Either you are in control of your data or you are out of control, possibly unaware that security exposure and vulnerabilities exist, and most importantly unable to respond in a coordinated and logical manner. Lack of security acumen and a fear of what a data breach could do to cripple or destroy a business has many companies searching for answers. It gets mentioned often enough by iTech Solutions Group customers that it led to iTech offering security as a service, which helps companies devise a security policy, puts controls in place, and monitors system security …

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• Four Hundred Monitor, January 17

  January 17, 2018 Dan Burger

  Forward-looking RPG programmers are modernizing legacy systems and making it clear IBM i is not the dinosaur that some folks think it is. Along with modernized thinking, comes the need for education and training and learning the skills needed to build next-generation applications. Where does that skill set come from? How long does it take to be skillful? Hear what two insiders have to say on the subject.

  Other stories topics in Monitor this week include: the complexity of multi-cloud environments, the dismantling of IBM Global Technical Services, and the IBM i trends that indicate good things to come, as …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 20, Number 2

  January 17, 2018 Doug Bidwell

  Spectre and Meltdown. Just the names are scary, and kind of remind you of a James Bond thriller! From an IBM i perspective, we should be ready, but hold on just a little bit longer until the story plays out. There is a licensed internal code, or LIC, PTF out for each of the release:

  • V7R3 – MF64551
  • V7R2 – MF64552
  • V7R1 – MF64553

  These can be ordered individually, but are not as yet included in either the HIPER or Security PTF Groups. (That seems strange!)

  In the cover letters for the LIC PTFs, it states that they can be …

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• Update On The Spectre And Meltdown Patches For Power

  January 15, 2018 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  When it comes to the Spectre and Meltdown speculative execution security vulnerabilities that hit as the new year was getting going, the important word to ponder is “mitigated.” Everyone is talking about mitigating the issue, but no one is using the word “fixed.” As we discussed last week, one of the two types of Spectre vulnerabilities – the Variant 2 known as branch target injection – is particularly tricky to hack and to fix, so IT vendors are choosing their words very carefully.

  The odds were that unintended consequences for such a low-level fix will occur, so you can …

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• Modernization Slides Down IBM i Priority List

  January 15, 2018 Dan Burger

  Many organizations that depend on mission critical applications running on IBM i have modernization on their agendas. Decisions need to be made whether they can continue as-is with applications, databases, and systems or modernization or migration will serve them best in the years ahead. Higher levels of efficiency and adaptability are within reach, but only with significant planning and budgeting.

  Profound Logic, an application modernization software company with an IBM i history that predates the term modernization, has just released its second in a series of modernization white papers based on surveys of IBM i shops – most of …

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• Guru: Continue A Sequence When Inserting

  January 15, 2018 Ted Holt

  Carlos writes, “Hey, Ted! I have a question regarding inserting rows into a file that is keyed on a sequence number. I need to insert more rows, and I need the new rows to have the next available sequence numbers. Can I perform this task with an SQL INSERT statement, or do I have to use record-level access?”

  If the sequence number were defined as an identity column, Carlos would have no problem. Unfortunately, the sequence number column is a simple numeric field. Fortunately, I was able to give Carlos two solutions. It would not surprise me if you can …

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• As I See It: Resolutions, Or Let’s Make A Deal

  January 15, 2018 Victor Rozek

  It’s a new year and hope again rears its fickle head. Gyms are full of bulging spandex, as the clanging of free-weights punctuates the incessant whir of stationary bikes. Bad habits, so recently embraced, are once again under attack. Like truth in White House press briefings, they have become an unhealthy indulgence that needs to be banished. We’ll be drinking less, exercising more, and eating smaller quantities of just the right foods. And since we’re sober and thinking clearly, we’ll save more money and quit obsessing about how many people love us on social media.

  For a few months, at …

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• Rimini Street Finally Finds Its Way to Wall Street

  January 15, 2018 Alex Woodie

  As 2017 was coming to a close, Rimini Street quietly completed its quest to become a publicly traded company. But the firm, which provides third party support for DB2 for i and JD Edwards customers, didn’t go public through an initial public offering. Instead, it landed a listing on the Nasdaq by acquiring a company that already had one.

  In October, Rimini Street completed the merger with GP Investments Acquisition Corp, a so-called “blank check” company that was formed in 2015 specifically for the purpose of effecting a merger or acquisition in the United States or Europe. The company had …

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• Power Systems And The Spectre And Meltdown Threats

  January 10, 2018 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Speculative execution is something that has been part of modern processors for well over a decade, and while it is hard to quantify how much of a performance benefit this collection of techniques have delivered, it is obviously significant enough that all CPUs, including IBM Power and System z chips, have them. And that, as the new Spectre and Meltdown security holes that were announced by Google on January 3 show, turns out to be a big problem.

  Without getting too deep into the technical details, there are many different ways to implement speculative execution, which is used to …

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• Three IBM i Trends To Watch This Year

  January 10, 2018 Alex Woodie

  Happy New Year! As we roll out of bed and shake off the cobwebs of 2017, it’s worth taking some time to think about what 2018 will bring to the IBM i ecosystem, and what it could mean to IBM i professionals, in hopes of getting off to a hot (or maybe just less cold) start to the new year.

  Here are three big trends to keep an eye on as the months gradually turn into a year. It starts off with everybody’s favorite topic, security.

  1. Focus on Security

  When the calendar flipped to 2017, there was a palpable …

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