• Advice For The Power Systems Shop That Has To Buy Now

  October 23, 2017 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Having to buy a new computer as one generation is ending and the new one is not quite yet beginning puts users in a tough spot. Without knowing the feeds and speeds of the system, you can’t compare what you might be giving up if you buy now. And without knowing the price of the new machine, and the current price of its predecessor that you might buy, you can’t tell how hard you have to negotiate if you buy the current model instead of the one that is coming down the pike in a few months.

  IT budgets tend …

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• Vision Adds Security To HA Management Service

  October 23, 2017 Alex Woodie

  Fresh off its acquisition of Enforcive, Vision Solutions last week unveiled a new managed resilience service that adds professional IBM i security services to its managed offering for high availability and disaster recovery.

  As part of its managed HA and DR services, Vision Solutions (which has been merged with Syncsort) works with customers to ensure that their MIMIX, iTera, and OMS/ODS environments are shipshape and read to be called into duty in the event of an unexpected outage or natural disaster.

  Now Vision is adding the same type of options to its managed security service and selling it alongside …

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• Guru: Wow! I Could Have Had Long Column Names! – Take 2

  October 23, 2017 Ted Holt

  In 1990, three computer science professors named Gorla, Benander, and Benander wrote about debugging effort in COBOL programs. Among their claims was that debugging is easier if variable names were between 10 and 16 characters long. The original native data definition facilities allowed variable names up to 10 characters, but nowadays we can define alias names that Gorla, Benander, and Benander would be proud of.

  It is common in many DB2 for i shops to have physical files with field names of six characters or less. This practice dates to predecessor systems, such as the System/36, for which the …

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• A Skills Shortage Solution Alert

  October 23, 2017 Dan Burger

  Employee development doesn’t get the credit it deserves when it comes to talent acquisition. Putting the right people in the right place and giving them the right tools is not a new concept. Many of the top programmers work for companies where this concept has been in place for years. They are homegrown. It follows a pattern: Hire programmers with useful skill sets and if that doesn’t include modern RPG, train them.

  The steep green-screen learning curve and natural tendency for young developers to resist the old fixed format RPG isn’t really a factor with modern free format RPG and …

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• Big Blue Profits, Poised For The Power9

  October 23, 2017 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Let’s just cut straight to the good news. Even though IBM’s revenues have declined for the 22nd quarter in a row, and its profits are declining even faster, the substantial investments that Big Blue has made in its System z14 mainframes and Power9 systems is about to start paying off.

  The System z14 mainframes made their debut in July and start shipping in the middle of September, converting from a drain on the company to a fairly large flow of cash. Power9 chip development ceased a while ago, and we presume most of the system engineering is done, and even …

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• Continuous Improvement: Within Reach, Without Fear

  October 18, 2017 Dan Burger

  There are relatively few companies with end-to-end operations that actually achieve the goal of continuous improvement. It tends to be more of a slogan than a policy for most. And it’s easily recognizable with a glimpse of the IT department. Cutting edge isn’t mandatory, but the stakes have never been higher for those that lag or, through inaction or other poor decisions, make costly mistakes — some quickly realized and others of the ticking time bomb variety.

  Keeping an IT department moving forward is no sure bet, but it helps when the company commitment to persistent progress is more than …

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• Visual Data Exploration Comes To Db2 Web Query

  October 18, 2017 Alex Woodie

  The IBM i server isn’t known as an analytics powerhouse — transaction processing is more its thing. But with the latest release of Db2 WebQuery for i, customers are getting visualization capabilities that will let them explore their data in powerful new ways.

  IBM announced Db2 Web Query for i version 2.2.1 on October 3 as part of its Technology Refreshes (TRs) for IBM i 7.2 and 7.3. While the release number would seem to indicate a minor update, the improvements are actually quite substantial, says Robert Bestgen, IBM’s product development manager for Db2 Web Query.

  “We kind of moved …

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• Why Setting IT Priorities Is So Important

  October 18, 2017 Alex Woodie

  During the Great Recession, IT professionals around the world were tasked with greater responsibilities while simultaneously working with lower budgets, a pattern that has since been ingrained as the “new normal” in tech. Now, according to a report from technology solutions provider CDW, that ongoing budget crunch is manifesting itself in new ways as organizations struggle to effectively deal with a host of IT priorities.

  In its “Power of Priority” report, CDW surveyed 800 IT decision makers from eight industries to gain a greater understanding of how organizations are prioritizing, strategizing, and executing against their IT goals. It also analyzed …

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• Four Hundred Monitor, October 18

  October 18, 2017 Dan Burger

  It doesn’t take a detective to find the visual and behavioral clues that connect mainframe and IBM i professionals and their IT environments. There’s an aging workforce, a skills depletion, and a deepening concern about modernization. Author Don Denoncourt has been knee-deep (perhaps deeper) in both environments and he has some advice about steps that need to be taken. See the top story in Monitor this week.

  Also in Monitor this week . . . taking a hard look at your IT deficiencies, finding IT leaders among C-level executives, and paying more attention to the future of mobile computing. Keep …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 19, Number 41

  October 18, 2017 Doug Bidwell

  We have taken advantage of the lull in PTFs to restructure the IBM i PTF Guide. Check out the “Prior” worksheet, it is designed to let you know what the latest Cume (cumulative PTF patch stack) was on several prior releases. In many cases, these are available for order from IBM.

  We have also added a “Links” worksheet. It is a collection for the links we have found useful over the years. If you have any suggestions about what should be added for the benefit of all, send them in and we’ll add them on.

  There is one broken …

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