• LightEdge Shops A “True Cloud” To IBM i Users

  January 29, 2018 Dan Burger

  IBM i-based cloud computing is not your average everyday IBM i environment. And it’s different from managed services that are sometimes called hosted services. True cloud – a term that’s being used to describe virtualized computing, storage, and networking available with utility-style flexible pricing – is still a rare sight with IBM i. But Roger Mellman knows where you can find one. He built it for LightEdge Solutions, a services provider with an edge on the typical managed service provider.

  IBM first approached LightEdge five years ago about building an IBM i-based cloud, Mellman, the director of enterprise …

  Read more

• Guru: Sorting In Teraspace

  January 29, 2018 Jon Paris

  In an earlier tip, Teraspace To The Rescue, I discussed how to use teraspace in RPG to permit the storage and manipulation of data that requires more storage than RPG’s 16MB limit. In this tip I am going to discuss how such data can be sorted. Hint: SORTA won’t work!

  Before I get to that though, there is one thing I should mention. In that original tip I said: “For reasons I have never understood, DEALLOC will not null your pointer. So it is a good idea to do it yourself. . . .” IBM’s Barbara Morris pointed out, …

  Read more

• IBM Winds Down Yet More Older Power Systems Features

  January 29, 2018 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  It is amazing to me that IBM stops selling specific Power Systems and features in such a gradual and what looks like a haphazard fashion. It seems to take forever to kill off older product lines. It may be more a function of what supplies Big Blue has in the barn than with some kind of orderly, sensible withdrawal from marketing of prior generations of gear.

  The upshot is that it is very hard to figure out what IBM is and is not selling, and when it will stop selling particular features. And because IBM does not usually provide the …

  Read more

• Reader Feedback On IBM i Strategy: Technology Choices And The Vendor Ecosystem

  January 29, 2018 Dan Burger

  Hi Dan:

  While Steve Will’s vision for 5 to 15 years out is encouraging and morale-building, it’s not a commitment to the i marketplace – it’s called a “statement of direction” for a reason! I’ll nod in agreement that it’s all good while hoping IBM delivers not only on AI but on enhanced “primitive” processes necessary to make AI useful, if not valuable.

  AI is based on events, transactions, and business rules. Without the primitives — robust and high-performance database technology; extreme hardware/software platform stability; and programming technologies that support the development, testing, deployment, and maintenance of complex business rules …

  Read more

• IBM i Strategy: Technology Choices And The Vendor Ecosystem

  January 24, 2018 Dan Burger

  When Steve Will talks about IBM strategy for the future, he’s not talking about next week or even next year. His view is five, 10, and 15 years into the future. That’s where the planning is being done. The next few years are past the planning stage and into the development stage. That’s a general statement of direction. Adjustments happen within shorter development timeframes.

  Will, the IBM i chief architect, was at the OCEAN user group meeting last week in Orange County, California, making his case for the future of IBM i. His presentation was titled “IBM i in the …

  Read more

• Transforming The Art Of Code And The Face Of IBM i

  January 24, 2018 Philippe Magne

  (Sponsored Content)  ARCAD has been in business for 25 years, and we have done a lot of technical innovation over those years. We started our business with traditional software change management, on the software change management at that time, which is the combination of having a set of tools to manage developer work and then to transfer from development to test to production. At that time, of course, it was only for OS/400 and then IBM i production platforms. There are some customers with many production machines, but the typical case involves two machines: one for development and …

  Read more

• InterForm Keeps Automotive Data On The Straight and Narrow

  January 24, 2018 Alex Woodie

  In the massive automotive supply chain, barcodes and EDI are part of the daily grind. Warehouse workers and drivers have no choice but to assume the barcodes are correct. But what happens when the barcode is wrong? That’s a situation that InterForm, a provider of electronic forms management software, is addressing with a new solution.

  The penalties for bad data can be severe. If you’re dealing with a big OEM like Ford or General Motors, the penalties can approach $300 per incident. Some of the European manufacturers that InterForm A/S CEO Peter Sørensen works with pay penalties of €3,000 per …

  Read more

• Four Hundred Monitor, January 24

  January 24, 2018 Dan Burger

  This week, Monitor connects you with an article that covers the latest version of RDi, IBM’s tool of choice for modern application development. Don’t miss the 60-day trial download from IBM.

  Also within reach are articles about an open source integrated development environment for IBM i created by the energetic and community-minded Liam Allan; today’s artificial intelligence reality and tomorrow’s expectations as an IT workhorse; and IBM’s haul of patents in 2017 that are well represented by AI intellectual property. Also look for the latest IBM i Marketplace Survey in the Resources section. Plus, updates to the events calendar worth …

  Read more

• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 20, Number 3: Important Update For Spectre/Meltdown

  January 22, 2018 Doug Bidwell

  There has been an important development in the area of the Spectre and Meltdown security vulnerabilities as it relates to Power Systems. As you can see from this follow-on notice from January 15, IBM’s Product Security Incident Response Team (PSIRT) has these vulnerabilities classified as “High Severity,” which is more a reflection about the potential threat they represent, given the nature of speculative execution of Power (and other) processors, rather than because of an actual exploit that is in the wild that is using these vulnerabilities to get access to unauthorized information on systems.

  We have a little more …

  Read more

• The IBM i Base Is Ready To Move On Up

  January 22, 2018 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Even the most eager hyperscaler or cloud builder in the world has to let a server sit in place, running workloads, for at least three years to get good value on the dollar spent, and in many cases, machines are repurposed to be in the fleet for longer than that. And no company can accept the risk of changing all machines at the same time, for obvious reasons other than cost, because such a change could be very disruptive to any business. Enterprises tend to have less spare iron and fewer techies, and so they are even more conservative, and …

  Read more

Previous Articles Next Articles