• For Entry IBM Shops, Power9 Is About Performance And Security

  December 10, 2018 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Buying new systems costs money, often a lot of money relative to the size of the overall IT budget and the revenue and profit streams of the companies for which they work and, in essence, actually embody what that company really is. So in a sense, systems are always worth the money if they are actually letting people do their work properly.

  That said, there is always an argument to be made for doing an upgrade – often actually a migration because the system itself cannot easily or economically be upgraded – and another set of arguments for waiting a …

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• An IBM i Year In Review

  December 10, 2018 Alex Woodie

  Another year is just about wrapped up for us here at IT Jungle. That means it’s time to ease off the news pedal just a tad and enter into a retrospective mood, with the hope of gaining some perspective on where we’ve been in 2018 and perhaps how we’ll start off 2019.

  It all started off rather poorly, way back in. . .

  January

  . . . when the big news was about Spectre and Meltdown, the two vulnerabilities that brought everybody rudely back to the real world following the New Year’s celebration. Nearly all types of processors, including …

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• Guru: Addressing A Legitimate Question

  December 10, 2018 Ted Holt

  This is the last Monday issue of The Four Hundred for 2018. My, how time flies! I like to do something different at year end. In previous years I have solved Sudoku puzzles, found my way through mazes, solved the peg game, and more. This year I wish to honor a request that has come from various people and to address what they consider to be a legitimate question.

  As I wrote recently, the question I hear occasionally goes something like this: “Why bother with service programs? Why not use dynamic calls?” Rather than insult the …

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• As I See It: Digital Digs

  December 10, 2018 Victor Rozek

  My father once bought a house in San Francisco for $15K and change. By any measure it was a modest home, three bedrooms, one bath, 1,300 square feet, located in a lower-middle class district in the Upper Mission. Working class blue-collar families lived there, and our neighborhood was chockfull of diversity long before that word became both fashionable and divisive. Just on our block we had German, Mexican, Italian, Polish, and Chinese families. Kids played in the streets, and at dinnertime front doors opened and mothers called for their children in thickly accented English.

  One of the unique characteristics of …

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• Mad Dog 21/21: Hat In Hand

  December 10, 2018 Hesh Wiener

  IBM’s acquisition of Red Hat is for Ginni Rometty as vital and significant as Lou Gerstner’s development of IBM’s services business in the 1990s. If IBM can properly integrate Red Hat, IBM’s legacy businesses and strategic initiatives will all be reinvigorated. This is not merely desirable, but absolutely necessary. Without the Red Hat acquisition, IBM is threatened with advancing torpidity and imminent decline. For IBM right now, it is Red Hat do or die.

  Red Hat’s Enterprise Linux operating system already contributes to the viability of IBM’s server offerings. But when an IBM hardware customer, let’s say a mainframe shop, …

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• Skytap Says It’s Building a ‘True Cloud’ Offering for IBM i

  December 5, 2018 Alex Woodie

  IBM i shops have a multitude of managed service providers (MSPs) to choose from for private cloud capabilities, but those looking for a public, AWS-like cloud experience are out of luck. Now an outfit called Skytap is looking to change that by providing a “true cloud” experience that lets IBM i customers scale up and down capacity from a Web GUI.

  Skytap was founded in Seattle, Washington, about 12 years ago to facilitate the development, testing, training, and modernization of enterprise applications destined to run in the public cloud. The venture-backed outfit used its expertise in virtualization to help customers …

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• Mono Comes to RPM, Making .NET on IBM i Even Easier

  December 5, 2018 Alex Woodie

  Here’s some good news for IBM i developers who want to develop using Microsoft’s .NET framework and tools: the Mono runtime for IBM i is now available via the RPM and Yum open source delivery method. Delivering Mono this way should make it even easier for IBM i developers to take advantage of the popular .NET tooling and runtime.

  Jesse Gorzinski, IBM‘s business architect of open source technologies, broke the news on Thanksgiving Day. “#IBMi users have something to be thankful for today: .NET in RPM form! Yes, you can ‘yum install’ mono now, from @friedkiwi’s repo!!” Gorzinski wrote …

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• IBM Delivers New Goodies with ACS Update

  December 5, 2018 Alex Woodie

  IBM has issued a new release of Access Client Solutions (ACS), the indispensable Java-based client that delivers a range of functionality to administrators, developers, and users alike. In the new release of ACS, IBM delivers enhancements across a range of functions, including SQL queries, database schemas, data transfer, and printing and emulation.

  IBM first unveiled ACS way back in August 2012 as the strategic replacement for older IBM i client interfaces, such as Access for Windows, Access for Web, and Access for Linux. With a full 5250 emulator, support for printing, the capability to view IFS, spool file, and message …

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• Four Hundred Monitor, December 5

  December 5, 2018 Jenny Thomas

  We’re in the final countdown for 2018 with just one more issue of Four Hundred Monitor to go. While most of us look forward to a little rest and relaxation over the holidays, we also recognize that we need to start gearing up for the New Year. The same goes for us here at IT Jungle. We are ready for the break but also looking toward the future and what we want to accomplish in 2019. If you’re a planner, you might want to check out our calendar listing below where you will find info about some valuable conferences in …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 20, Number 48

  December 5, 2018 Doug Bidwell

  There is a new HIPER group, but no Security group, that is new on all three supported releases (V7R3, V7R2, and V7R1).

  Just a reminder that between May 19 and 22 next year, the POWERUp19 conference, formerly known as the COMMON conference, is heading to the Disneyland Resort in Anaheim, California. With over 300 sessions for Power Systems and IBM i education, you can keep your skills up-to-date by creating a custom schedule based on your specific needs. Find out more details at https://www.common.org/events/powerup/.

  There are recommended fixes for Electronic Services. I just spent a full week working through …

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