• When Cloud Meets DevOps on IBM i

  April 7, 2021 Alex Woodie

  We’re witnessing multiple macro trends play out in the IT industry, with the rise of cloud computing and managed services being one of the most compelling storylines in 2021. How software is developed is changing too, with DevOps tools and agile methodologies rapidly becoming the norm. When these two trends converge in our little neck of the woods, it can leave IBM i customers wondering where to go. With their recently formed partnership, ARCAD Software and Connectria have mapped out one path.

  A decade ago, companies were still unsure of the cloud. They would dabble with adding development, test, and …

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• JD Edwards Roadmap Reveals Decisions To Be Made

  April 7, 2021 Alex Woodie

  SAP isn’t the only ERP vendor that wants to move on-prem customers to its cloud-based option. Its top rival, Oracle, appears to have similar aims. The company has made public commitments to continue supporting its JD Edwards customers for years to come, so there is no immediate reason to panic. But considering the investments that customers make in their ERP environments, JD Edwards customers should pay close attention to what comes next.

  When Oracle bought PeopleSoft in 2004 for $10.3 billion, it also acquired the JD Edwards portfolio. That includes the World line, which only runs on IBM i, and …

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• IBM Completes Migration of Knowledge Center to IBM Documentation

  April 7, 2021 Alex Woodie

  For years, the IBM Knowledge Center has been the go-to place to get technical information about how things work in IBM i. Got a question about RPG opcodes or ALLOBJ authority? The Knowledge Center was the place for you. As part of its broader overhaul of its online resources and properties, IBM recently completed the migration of its Knowledge Center to the new site, called IBM Documentation.

  IBM i professionals can find all of the content they have grown accustomed to finding at the Knowledge Center on the new IBM Documentation site, which can be found at www.ibm.com/docs/en. There …

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• Four Hundred Monitor, April 7

  April 7, 2021 Jenny Thomas

  Survive. Adapt. Thrive. Yes, that’s our tagline here in the IT Jungle. But it could also be the three best words to describe this last year since the beginning of the Great Pandemic. As parts of the U.S. and the world begin to re-open, much of the IT industry-related news is focusing on lessons learned and the changes organizations are their employees are making to keep everyone healthy and safe. The post-pandemic world is likely changed forever, with remote and in-person options becoming part of the norm. COMMON, for instance, is diving into this hybrid approach next month with its …

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• Crazy Idea Number 615: Variable Priced Power Systems Partitions

  April 5, 2021 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  When you stare down the blank page as much as I have in my career, you learn to not be afraid of that blank page. If you look at it long enough – usually for only a few minutes – ideas flip into existence like quantum particles spinning their curlicues. Most of them are silly, some are utterly useless, but eventually you get one that is worth following to see where it might go.

  So it is with an idea that popped into my head, which was a daydream about IBM creating variable priced partitions on the Power Systems machines. …

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• Do The Math When Looking at IBM i Hosting For Cost Savings

  April 5, 2021 Matt Paterini

  COVID-19 has accelerated certain business trends that were already gaining strength prior to the start of the pandemic. E-commerce, telehealth, and video conferencing are some of the most obvious examples. One example that may not be as obvious to the general public but has a profound impact on business is the shift in strategy of IBM i infrastructure from traditional, on-premises environments to some form of remote configuration. These remote configurations and all of their variations are broadly referred to in the community as IBM i hosting.

  “Hosting” in this context can mean different things to different people, and in …

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• Guru: Web Services, DATA-INTO and DATA-GEN, Part 1

  April 5, 2021 Jon Paris

  Many of the “Can you help me with. . . ” communications that cross my desk these days include reference to JSON. Sometimes the questioner is receiving JSON in a file, or has to retrieve it from a web service, or needs to generate JSON in response to a query. While there are many ways to handle these requirements, RPG’s built-in DATA-INTO and DATA-GEN can do a lot of the heavy lifting for you and are quite simple once you understand the basics.

  In this series of tips, I am going to start with a basic example that uses both …

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• Oracle Versus Rimini Slogs On In Second Decade

  April 5, 2021 Alex Woodie

  The lawsuit that keeps on giving, Oracle Versus Rimini Street, is generating news again, as the two companies continue to duke it out in federal court. But the battle spilled out into the streets with a pair of dueling press releases issued April 1 that had us wondering if it was all a joke. It wasn’t.

  The last time we visited Oracle Versus Rimini Street was two years ago, when the Supreme Court ruled 9-0 in favor of Rimini on the issue of costs. After a jury decided that Rimini was violating Oracle’s copyright in its third-party software support business …

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• HCI Is The Dominant Converged System, Probably For Good

  April 5, 2021 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Way back in the dawn of time, all systems were “converged,” meaning that their compute, storage, and networking were embodied in their totality within the same system. These functions were pulled apart and a slew of best-of-breed server, switch, and storage appliances were created and they could be mixed and matched in myriad ways. Some might say in too many ways for the vast majority of IT shops, who don’t have the luxury of bales of money laying around to attract PhDs in computer science.

  As distributed computing really took hold in the 1990s, but the 2000s it was clear …

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• Skytap To Expand IBM i Cloud Offering

  March 31, 2021 Alex Woodie

  The Power Systems S922 is the go-to server for many cloud providers, including Skytap, which sells access to and manages IBM i, AIX, and Linux environments in Microsoft Azure and IBM Cloud. But as its cloud business grows, Skytap is finding that some of its customers are getting close to hitting their heads on the S922’s processing ceiling, which has precipitated a need for bigger boxes.

  Skytap is currently scoping out the available Power Systems server lineup in anticipation of rolling out a second, larger Power offering, says Skytap Vice President Dan Jones.

  “One of the key hurdles we want …

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