• IBM i Developer Day This Week

  November 10, 2021 Alex Woodie

  IBM i developers of all stripes are welcome to IBM i Developer Day, a free virtual event that’s scheduled to take place next Friday, November 19, at 1 p.m. ET. Organized by Liam Allan, the event will feature a heavy dose of Visual Studio Code (Allan’s favorite IDE) plus discussions hosted by IBMers on the future of IBM i and its role in the cloud.

  The world of application development is moving fast, but many IBM i pros are still stuck in the past when it comes to the tools, technologies, and techniques they use. While RPG and COBOL development …

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• Four Hundred Monitor, November 10

  November 10, 2021 Jenny Thomas

  “Parting is such sweet sorrow” is an oxymoron Juliet cries to her lover, Romeo, when he departs for the evening. It might also appropriately describe IBM’s separation from Kyndryl, which was finalized last week and now allows the two companies to begin focusing on their own priorities while looking forward to a time when they might be reunited in the domination of their chosen space. For IBM, it’s back to full attention on AI and the hybrid cloud. And as we see from the news this week, Big Blue is wasting no time in refocusing its efforts and we hope …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 23, Number 45

  November 10, 2021 Doug Bidwell

  Don’t get hyper, but there are new High Impact/Pervasive PTFs that you need to take a look at for the supported releases of the IBM i platform. Those are HIPERs in the IBM lingo. There are also some patches for Temporary Storage PTFs that you also need to be aware of.

  Here is the rundown of PTF Groups by IBM i release level:

  PTF Groups 7.4:

  • HIPERs
  • Temporary Storage PTFs

  PTF Groups 7.3:

  • HIPERs
  • Temporary Storage PTFs

  PTF Groups 7.2:

  • HIPERs

  PTF Groups 7.1:

  • Nothing going on here, as is typical but not always true.

  New (or Updated) Links for …

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• Inside The IBM “Denali” Power E1080 System

  November 8, 2021 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  With Big Blue not really shipping its Power10-based big, bad “Denali” Power E1080 system in full volume and with full configurations until December, we knew we would have some time to dig down into the architecture of the Denali systems. And with other things out of the way, which also needed to be covered, including our initial coverage on the Power E1080 machine on September 8 and some follow-on stories, we are now eagerly taking the lid off the Denali machine and taking a hard look at it for you.

  Seriously. Here is the machine with the lid off of …

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• Thoroughly Modern: Infrastructure Challenges And Easing Into The Cloud

  November 8, 2021 Marcel Sarrasin

  There is an old saying, purportedly a Chinese curse but never proven to be anything but a saying by English diplomats who interfaced with the Middle Kingdom: “May you live in interesting times.” There is an equally mistaken etymology that the word for “crisis” in Chinese is comprised of two Mandarin words for “danger” and “opportunity.”

  Even though people misunderstand the source of these sayings, and the latter one is just simply not true at all, it is still the case that there has never been a more interesting time in the information technology sector in general and …

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• Guru: Abstract Data Types and RPG

  November 8, 2021 Ted Holt

  An abstract data type (ADT) is a type of data and a set of operations defined over that type of data. Using ADTs allows a programmer to work with data in terms of functionality rather than physical representation. The ADT is the basis of object-oriented programming. Does that mean that abstract data types don’t apply to procedural languages like RPG? Not at all. Quite the contrary.

  Before I show you how you can use abstract data types in RPG-based applications, let me further illustrate abstract data types with another, non-OO object — the user profile. The user profile is a …

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• IBM Offers Free Security Check for IBM i

  November 8, 2021 Alex Woodie

  IBM i shops that are concerned about security – and really, who isn’t concerned about their security these days? – may be interested in receiving a free security check from the experts at IBM Systems Lab Services.

  The IBM i Security Quick Check, as the free offering is called, was introduced by IBM in October as a way to help IBM i shops pinpoint the areas where their servers are susceptible to external attacks, insider threats, and malware.

  The security check will let organizations know where the security vulnerabilities exist in their IBM i configurations, according to a blog post …

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• Gartner Revises IT Spending Forecasts Upward For 2021 And 2022

  November 8, 2021 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  With a market as large as the information technology racket, small changes rack up to tens of billions of dollars up or down in global spending. Any increase is generally seen as good news because so many of the individual IT budgets are gauged against the global average. So, in a sense, it just got a little bit easier for you to argue that your own IT department should be spending more dough on IT because the prognosticators at Gartner have just raised their forecast for IT spending in 2022.

  It’s not much of an increase, mind you. So don’t …

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• Warning Signs: Inside Travis Perkins’ Failed ERP Migration

  November 3, 2021 Alex Woodie

  When UK construction supplier and home improvement retailer Travis Perkins announced last month that it had selected Oracle Fusion Cloud’s Financials as the core of its new ERP deployment, it marked the latest in a long series of decisions about the company’s computing infrastructure. Unfortunately, it came after many poor decisions and failed ERP migrations along the way. Hopefully they will serve to educate others who might travel the same path.

  Travis Perkins’ current ERP woes began in 2016 at Infor’s annual Inforum user conference in New York City. The UK company’s then CEO, John Carter, announced that it …

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• A Preview Of The Comarch Cloud Calculator

  November 3, 2021 Tomasz Wachnicki

  For many IBM i shops, the cloud is a new consumption model and cloud-based applications and infrastructure is still a new way of doing things. If the cloud means anything, it means reducing the friction of buying and using capacity and moving from capital expenses that have to be amortized to utility-style consumption that does not have to be. But there are a lot of moving parts, and customers have to be aware of how these things plug together and how they are priced so they can reckon what their cloud bill will be each hour, day, week, month, and …

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