• VAI Keeps Rolling with ERP Update, Cloud and SaaS Sales

  September 25, 2019 Alex Woodie

  “Scintillating growth” may not be the best words to describe the market for IBM i-based ERP software these days. But don’t tell that to the folks at VAI, who continue to develop compelling ERP software and grow its installed base, particularly on the cloud and software as a service (SaaS).

  For decades, VAI has been one of the go-to ERP providers for midsize firms in manufacturing, distribution, retail, and services. Its IBM i-based suite of software, S2K Enterprise, is trusted by hundreds of companies around North America. While many of its competitors on the platform have folded or been snapped …

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• What’s New With IBM i Customer Support

  September 25, 2019 Alex Woodie

  IBM is making big changes to its support program that will have a major impact on how IBM i customers interact with Big Blue, for both software and hardware support. Two weeks ago it announced that IBM i customers would be switched over from the old IBM Service Request tool to the new IBM My Support site. IBM is also expanding support for open source software on IBM i.

  IBM has been testing the new IBM Support site, www.ibm.com/mysupport, for over a year for various customer groups and geographies. On September 14, the company announced that it was cutting …

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• ARCAD Unveils GUI Modernization Tool

  September 25, 2019 Alex Woodie

  ARCAD Software is getting deeper into the application modernization business with the launch of iNow, a new tool designed to help IBM i users create compelling graphical user interfaces (GUI) that run across Windows, Web, and mobile form factors. The new offering, which is based on Microsoft .NET and utilizes Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) technology, is being sold as part of a new suite called ARCAD for IBM i Modernization.

  IBM i shops have been adapting their applications to Windows interfaces for the better part of 30 years, to the Web for about 20 years, and to mobile interfaces for …

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• Four Hundred Monitor, September 25

  September 25, 2019 Jenny Thomas

  Summer came to an end this week, although it certainly doesn’t seem that way in Southern California where temperatures are still topping 90 degrees. With the onset of fall comes the promise of tech news as conference season gets back underway and the companies that sell hardware and software look to get into the 2020 budgets of the companies that will be looking to buy hardware and software in the new year. Whiles we linger in this limbo between summer and fall, take a gander on what’s been happening around IT in the last week, and don’t miss the Calendar …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 21, Numbers 38

  September 25, 2019 Doug Bidwell

  It looks like the usual gang of PTF suspects are being rounded up for the latest batch of patches for the IBM i platform, plus a few extras thrown into the clink.

  These include:

  • SAP Support update for IBM i releases 7.4, 7.3, 7.2!
  • New groups for DB2 and DB2 Mirror at IBM i 7.4.
  • New Java group for IBM i 7.4, 7.3, 7.2, and 7.1.
  • New MGtools for 7.4, 7.3, and 7.2.
  • New IBM MQ for IBM i – V7.1.0/V8.0.0/V9.0.0 group for 7.3, and 7.2.

  There is not a lot in the way of New (Updated) Links this week, …

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• You’ve Still Got Friends In High Places

  September 23, 2019 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  For the past 25 years, and across a total of 78 meetings over that time, the Large User Group, or LUG as it is known, has been helping Big Blue keep the AS/400 and IBM i platform on the right track for the very large enterprises that have the system as their platform for running the mission critical applications that are at the heart of the business. The LUG has put forward thousands of requirements to IBM – both things that the organization wants IBM to do and other things that it wants IBM to stop doing – and …

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• Third Party Maintenance An Option As Power7 Goes EOL

  September 23, 2019 Alex Woodie

  Time is running out for IBM i shops with hardware support contracts for Power7 and Power7+ servers, which officially reach end of life (EOL) a week from today. For organizations that aren’t ready to migrate to newer Power8 or Power9 machines, there are third-party maintenance options that will let them keep running Power7 machines without abandoning the safety net.

  The September 30 EOL for Power7 hardware support not come as a surprise, as IBM has been talking about the event for two years. Big Blue has given its Power Systems customers plenty of time to upgrade from older systems, …

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• Guru: Parsing JSON With DATA-INTO And A Twist

  September 23, 2019 Mike Larsen

  One of my recent projects required me to parse JSON returned from a web service. On the surface this sounded like a pretty easy task, but I quickly ran into a challenge. The JSON being retuned didn’t have a top-level element, and since I wanted to load the JSON into a data structure, my program couldn’t handle it.

  After some searching, I found that some of my options included changing the code in the parser (JSONPARSE) or using a totally different parser altogether. While both of these are viable options, I decided to take a slightly different route.

  Before I …

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• As I See It: Restless

  September 23, 2019 Victor Rozek

  The more entangled I become with technology the more restless I feel when I’m away from it. The nervous system gets accustomed to the stimulation, the steady drip of dopamine from the little validations, the comforting illusion of wide-ranging intimacy, the ease of attachment without exertion. The Internet is fast food for lazy, twitchy synapses. And I’ve become conditioned to crave it.

  Like an alcoholic past due for a drink, I look around for my digital bottle.

  It’s on the coffee table. A swipe of a finger and I have access to a distorted world of dramatic headlines, lurid images, …

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• Relieving The Anxiety About IBM i Performance

  September 23, 2019 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Starting a business is an exciting thing, and one of the most fundamental activities any of us can engage in as members of a capitalist economy. My adage has always been: Those who can work, must; those who can employ, must as well. I have faced my share of those moments, starting a business, with excitement and trepidation and hope. And now, our good friend and colleague, Doug Mewmaw, has hung out his shingle, which says Peak System Performance on it.

  Mewmaw, as you well know from reading The Four Hundred, is an expert on performance analysis and …

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