• Thoroughly Modern: Digital Transformation Is More Important Than Ever

  April 15, 2020 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  There are very few things in life that don’t have some kind of distribution across behavior patterns. Some phenomena are driven by bell curves or inverted bell curves or some other kind of distribution – including random. And as such, we all know that the companies that comprise the IBM i base fall on different parts of the spectrum of behavior with regard to how up to date their systems and their applications are.

  In normal markets, where some of the pressures are not so intense, it might not matter as much to have a modern system, software, and application …

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• IBM i 7.3 Encryption Bolstered With TR8

  April 15, 2020 Alex Woodie

  Customers running IBM i 7.3 got some good news on the security front when IBM announced that the operating system would get support for the latest Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocol, version 1.3. And that’s not the only security-related enhancement this group of users received with the new Technology Refreshes.

  Last year, IBM gave IBM i shops the ability to use TLS 1.3, which is strongest publicly available encryption protocol used on the Internet today. TLS 1.3 debuted in the summer of 2018 and has since been adopted by nearly a quarter of sites on the Web, according to surveys. …

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• Four Hundred Monitor, April 15

  April 15, 2020 Jenny Thomas

  While COVID-19 continues to dominate headlines worldwide, there is still much happening in the world of IBM i. Last week we told you about the new CEO of IBM, Arvind Krishna, taking the helm, and this week we fill you in on the latest Technology Refresh on what’s become available for IBM i 7.4 TR2 or IBM i 7.3 TR8. As much as we would all like for all business to get back to usual, it is nice to have some semblance of normal with the Spring announcements. We’ve got that story and the latest news below, followed by our …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 22, Number 15

  April 15, 2020 Doug Bidwell

  Big Blue has been busy fixing some issues with the firmware (sometimes called microcode) and licensed internal code (LIC) for Power Systems platforms and the IBM i operating system.

  The new firmware is available on the following Power Systems machine types and models: 9008-22L; 9009-22A; 9009-41A; 9009-42A; 9223-22H; 9223-42H. You can find out more about the microcode update at this link.

  In addition, IBM has issued the LIC change as well: MA47553 – LIC QPFRADJ Hangs During Main Storage Pool Adjustment. You can learn more at this link, and here is the rundown of the patches by IBM …

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• Hacking IBM i: Penetration Testing Gains Popularity

  April 13, 2020 Alex Woodie

  Think your IBM i is hacker-proof? It may well be, but only a handful of systems have escaped the wrath of Carol Woodbury, the HelpSystems IBM i security expert who previously was the platform’s security architect at IBM. In recent years, Woodbury and company have ramped up a unique penetration testing service that aims to poke holes in IBM i configurations, all in the name of better security.

  Penetration testing, or ethical hacking, is growing in popularity as organizations seek to solidify the security of their servers. Open systems platform, like Linux and Windows servers and cloud resources, are the …

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• Where Is The Power Systems-IBM i Stimulus Package?

  April 13, 2020 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  The governments of the world are spending to try to compensate for the economic slowdown in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, which is the right thing to do. We wonder why IBM has not done more to help its Power Systems business.

  Just before the coronavirus pandemic really started to kick in throughout Europe and the United States, and as the Power9 family of Power Systems machines was entering the long tail part of its sales cycle, IBM announced a deal in Europe that gave customers buying its so-called scale out (what we would call entry) one-socket and two-socket …

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• Guru: Copy From Stream File FMTOPT(*NOCHK)

  April 13, 2020 Bob Cozzi

  Using SQL frequently, as I do, I tend to look for solutions to problems that can be resolved using the database language (i.e., SQL). Sometimes I have to invent a missing piece of the puzzle. Often that entails writing a User-Defined Function (UDF) for use in SQL, but sometimes a CL command is the better choice.

  Recently I had a situation where what the client calls an “EDI File” was being downloaded using sftp on the IBM server running i. This file is created at a vendor that runs IBM mainframes (an actual mainframe by the way) and the file …

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• The X Factor: Home Base

  April 13, 2020 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  As you might imagine, New York City is on my mind a lot these days. And I have some advice for you as you are transitioning to tighter quarters and working from home – something I have been doing for 25 years now.

  Way back in the dawn of time, back in the wake of the launch of the AS/400 when I graduated from college and moved to New York City because it was the biggest, scariest thing that I could do, my brain sort of melted from the enormity of it all. At that time, a recession was underway …

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• IT Starts To Feel The Impact Of The Great Infection

  April 13, 2020 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  You know the difference between an economy and an ecosystem? Me neither.

  We stand by our conviction – and that backed up by the economists and market watchers at IDC – that the IT sector is going to fare better than other sectors in the wake of the global coronavirus pandemic and the jarring effects of the lockdown most of us are under. But we are also not surprised that IDC had to revise its estimates of IT spending projections for 2020 and beyond only a few days after putting out its initial thoughts. It’s a fluid situation, with …

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• IBM i Can Thrive Under New CEO, Arvind Krishna

  April 8, 2020 Alex Woodie

  Arvind Krishna took the reins as CEO of IBM on Monday, marking the changing of the guard at one of this country’s foremost tech firms. But this is no ordinary switch, as Krishna must immediately navigate IBM through an extraordinary crisis that combines technological and social upheaval along with a new business climate. If given the proper attention, the IBM i platform has the chance to shine.

  A new IBM CEO is a momentous event in and of itself. Since Thomas Watson founded the company in 1914, there have been only nine other CEOs at the Armonk, New York, company …

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