• Sundry Power Systems Enhancements Round Out The Year

  October 15, 2018 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  It is the fall – autumn if you speak formally as my British friends do – and that means Big Blue has some peripheral announcements to make to finish up the 2018 season.

  In announcement letter 218-346, perhaps the most important development is that the PowerVM server virtualization hypervisor has a new update, V3.1, that supports the Power9 processor. We would have thought that this had happened already, way back when the first Power9 iron was announced back in February, but go figure. It may be that this release of PowerVM is the first one that is tuned to …

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• Guru: A More Efficient Way To Merge With SQL

  October 15, 2018 Mike Larsen

  Lately, I’ve been using the merge statement in my programs to insert or update rows in a table. I recently came across a situation where a program using merge was running every few minutes and performing updates to thousands of rows each time it ran. Since this table was journaled, it was obvious some re-design was necessary.

  For those unfamiliar with the merge statement, it is sometimes referred to as an “upsert.” That means it will either perform an update or an insert. In RPG terms, I like to compare it to a chain operation. With a chain, you check …

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• No Room For Cloudy Thinking When Moving To The Cloud

  October 15, 2018 Doug Mewmaw

  With new IT innovation, comes new IT thinking. That’s the way it’s always been.

  Right now, that new shiny IT toy that everyone must have is the cloud. In fact, the global market for managed services will grow from $107 billion in 2014 to $193 billion by 2019. As a result, Managed Services Providers (MSPs) are trying to convince CIOs to not only outsource their data center administration, but to trust them that they can manage their entire IT enterprise cheaper and more efficiently.

  Unfortunately, they both may just have their head in the clouds. You see, I’ve been here …

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• The Power8 Era Is Drawing To A Close

  October 15, 2018 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  They have had a good, long run, perhaps longer than anyone would have thought except that with Moore’s Law losing steam, the gap between processor generations is stretching out further and further. The entry Power8-based Power Systems machines – the ones that are most commonly used by IBM i shops – made their debut in April 2014. And now they are getting reading to make their exit.

  Big Blue likes to give customers a warning when things are ripped out of the product catalog, to its great credit, giving its channel partners and end users a chance to adjust …

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• Infor Elaborates on Coleman, IBM i Strategy

  October 10, 2018 Alex Woodie

  When Infor held its annual Inforum conference two weeks ago, the new AI bot Coleman played a big part, but nary an IBM i word was muttered publically. But that shouldn’t come as a concern to the thousands of companies that rely on the company’s IBM i software to run their businesses, Infor’s IBM i strategy Ross Freeman leader says.

  “We heard the same from Syteline customers. They didn’t hear much about Syteline,” says Freeman, who heads up IBM i strategy for the LX, XA, and System 21 ERP product lines. “We have 235 products and we’re all following the …

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• Kisco Bolsters Network Socket Security

  October 10, 2018 Alex Woodie

  IBM i shops that are serious about security should monitor all potential ingress routes into their computer systems, including network socket connections. Now Kisco Information Systems is supporting the latest network socket technology in IBM i 7.2 with its network security tool, SafeNet/i.

  The Internet is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, the network itself and its array of supporting technologies allow companies to connect with customers on the other side of the world in powerful and potentially lucrative new ways. But on the other hand, the Internet also allow intruders on the other side of the world to …

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• Bain Buys Rocket for $2 Billion

  October 10, 2018 Alex Woodie

  Rocket Software announced yesterday that Bain Capital Private Equity has agreed to acquire a majority stake in the company for $2 billion. The company’s management team will remain intact following the transaction, which is expected to be completed this quarter.

  Rumors have been swirling in recent months that Rocket had put itself on the market and was looking to sell itself or its products. The investment by Bain Capital should put an end to the speculation, as Rocket CEO and president Andy Youniss says the company is embarking upon its fourth decade of growth.

  “This new relationship will allow us …

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• Four Hundred Monitor, October 10

  October 10, 2018 Jenny Thomas

  With Fall COMMON conference right around the corner in Steel City beginning on October 15, now seems like a good time to remind ourselves why it is important to stay on top of new technology and use your voice to participate in our IBM i ecosystem. Without the opportunity to learn from experts and trade ideas, any industry runs the risk of fading away. While COMMON offers all sorts of hands-on sessions and group discussion panels to feed your IBM i needs, travel isn’t always plausible due to things like work, money, and family obligations. Even if you can’t get …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 20, Number 40

  October 10, 2018 Doug Bidwell

  There’s been some action on the PTF front with HIPERs and Security Groups for all releases this week. We also see that MGTools is updating again, with new stuff every week or two there. Again, there were no new links this week, but keep checking our handy guide to make sure you are staying up to date.

  Quick sidebar on some interesting messages you’ll hear when you call IBM Service for support. It seems there won’t be any phone support for Sev2 and lower after October 15. We’re guessing that will result in an uptick in number of Sev 1, …

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• Riding The Upgrade Cycle

  October 8, 2018 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  In an ideal world, all servers would always be new and all operating systems and applications would be patched and running in optimal form. But we don’t live in that world. And that means for many customers that don’t have bales of money sitting around, sometimes the IBM i platform starts to get a little long in the tooth.

  That is certainly the case for parts of the IBM i installed base. There are still a lot of Power5 and Power5+ customers out there who have resisted the temptation to upgrade their systems for the past five or six generations, …

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