• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 24, Number 34

  August 22, 2022 Doug Bidwell

  New defective PTFs – meaning PTFs to fix bugs in PTFs that should not be there to fix bugs in software that should not have been there in the first place – issued this week by IBM, and we are only now seeing that you could have been misinterpreting the meaning of “defective PTFs” all of these years. It is to fix defects in PTFs, as some of you might not be thinking. Language is not as good at communication as we sometimes give it credit for. There is always some ambiguity in the packets that are exchanged when two …

  Read more

• The Cloud’s Future Is So Bright, So Why Are You So Glum?

  August 17, 2022 Alex Woodie

  It’s tough not to be excited about the cloud, that amalgamation of servers that Gartner says will account for half of enterprise IT spending by 2025. The cloud is where the action is; it’s where everyone is headed. So what’s holding you back? The cloud, it turns out, is not so rosy for those without a clear path to get there.

  We’re in the steep part of the public cloud’s growth phase at the moment, thanks in part to COVID-19, which turbo-charged digital transformation projects, Gartner declared in a report earlier this year. The cloud’s growth comes at the …

  Read more

• Most App Modernization Projects a Struggle, Survey Finds

  August 17, 2022 Alex Woodie

  If you’re having trouble getting your application modernization project off the ground, you’re not alone. In a recent survey of IT leaders who have been involved with application modernization, more than 90 percent said they have struggled with the projects. The biggest pain points probably won’t surprise you.

  The survey, which was conducted on behalf of the Chicago-based IT consulting firm Asperitas Consulting, involved 150 IT leaders with titles like manager, director, VP, and CIO. The survey was restricted to individuals who have previous experience with application modernization projects, and who work at companies with at least 1,000 employees. …

  Read more

• COMMON Launches IBM i Security Conference

  August 17, 2022 Alex Woodie

  Security is a big concern for IBM i professionals, and now the topic is getting its very own conference. COMMON recently announced that the inaugural i on Security 2022 conference will take place this October in conjunction with its NAViGATE conference in St. Louis, Missouri.

  Security on the IBM i has been dismal for many years, according the annual PowerTech State of Security report, which has documented the poor security practices of IBM i shops. While the servers can be locked down as tightly as any in the industry, the combination of poor configuration, archaic programming models, and lazy administrative …

  Read more

• Four Hundred Monitor, August 17

  August 17, 2022 Jenny Thomas

  Summer may be winding down as the kids head back to school, but the IT ecosystem is heating up with lots of news and events for you in this week’s Monitor. September and October are historically very busy months in the Jungle, but after the slower pace of the past couple of years, people seem ready to get back to business. Before you read on, a quick reminder about our series the entry and midrange Power10 machines by our fearless leader Tim PM. This week’s installment is the fifth in the series and it’s worth your time to catch up. …

  Read more

• A Slew Of Add-On Services For Power10 Systems

  August 17, 2022 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Back in February, we told you about a new set of services called Power Expert Care that offered enhanced services above and beyond Software Maintenance (SWMA) for the operating system and systems software stack and the hardware maintenance that comes with support contracts. In recent weeks, IBM has rolled out more services under the Power Expert Care umbrella.

  In announcement letter 122-006, the based Power Expert Care services are extended to the Power10 entry servers – the Power S1014, the Power S1022s, the Power S1022, the Power L1022, the Power S1024, and the Power L1024 – and in announcement …

  Read more

• Power10 Midrange Machine: The Power E1050

  August 15, 2022 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  This is fifth part of our in-depth coverage of the entry and midrange Power10 machines that were announced on July 12. This week, we end the hardware deep dives with a look at the Power E1050 midrange machine. This is one of the best and most capable servers that Big Blue has ever designed, and it is a damned shame that it does not run the IBM i operating system.

  But, as we have pointed out before, it can any time IBM is convinced by enough of you that it should. The lack of IBM i support is a marketing …

  Read more

• IBM Puts The Finishing Touches On PowerHA For IBM i 7.5

  August 15, 2022 Alex Woodie

  If you have been waiting to use the new release of PowerHA SystemMirror for IBM i 7.5, then we have good news for you: IBM has finally completed the paperwork necessary to enable customers to actually get it.

  Unless you have a soft spot in your heart for IBM product IDs and feature codes (we know you’re out there), the August 9 software announcement doesn’t have a whole lot of actionable information. IBM says that it has updated the product “with the necessary product IDs and feature codes to complete the required ordering and upgrade structure,” which is IBM-speak for …

  Read more

• Guru: Regular Expressions, Part 2

  August 15, 2022 Mike Larsen

  In the first part of this series, I showed how to replace characters in a string using SQL and regular expressions. This time, I’ll show other regular expressions that are available for us to use. The regular expression functions I’ll show are REGEXP_COUNT and REGEXP_LIKE and the examples come from production programs that I’ve recently implemented.

  In the first example (Figure 1), I want to get a count of the number of occurrences of a pattern within a string. To make this more interesting, I’m searching for two different patterns within a sting. To accomplish this objective, I used …

  Read more

• Get Your Security Education, And Not From The School Of Hard Knocks

  August 15, 2022 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  If there is one thing that is consistently hard for human beings, it is learning from the experience of others. When it comes to IBM i security, it is safe to say that many IBM i shops are in over their heads and they have to get all of the help they can to try to batten down the hatches against the many threats that all systems – even the IBM i platform – can be the victim of these days.

  That’s why IBM i security software vendor Raz-Lee has put together a series of webinars in September to help …

  Read more

Previous Articles Next Articles