• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 19, Number 35

  September 6, 2017 Doug Bidwell

  Welcome to the IBM i PTF Guide, which was designed to help you figure out what patches to apply to your releases so you can keep current and therefore keep optimal in terms of performance, stability, and security. This should be  your own personal IBM i Patch Wednesday, and frankly, with the Labor Day holiday in the United States, there was not a lot going on this week.

  The Recommended PTFs for all functional areas were updated, and summary lists for all three current IBM i releases were updated in *SF97VRM). ERP giant and in-memory processing upstart SAP also …

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• Where’s the ‘Coleman’ for IBM i?

  August 30, 2017 Alex Woodie

  In case you haven’t noticed, we’re in the midst of an artificial intelligence (AI) revolution that’s bringing automation to places where it never existed, including ERP software. The latest entry into the field is Infor, which turned heads last month with a new AI bot dubbed Coleman. Unfortunately – or fortunately, depending on your views on AI – Coleman won’t be coming to IBM i.

  Infor, which owns the biggest collection of IBM i application software on the planet, has slyly positioned itself as a scrappy alternative to Oracle and SAP in the enterprise software space. While the giants …

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• CIO Summit Planned For IBM i Executives

  August 30, 2017 Dan Burger

  Many CIOs and IT directors, regardless of industry or geography, have the same problem. They go it alone, figuring their business problem, their company, and everything about their situation is unique. Or maybe it doesn’t dawn on them that another CIO has faced a similar problem and learned a few lessons — good and bad ones — along the way.

  It’s not that lone wolf CIOs deliberately set out to reinvent the wheel. But setting priorities and goals and making decisions without getting outside your silo is a pretty good way to not only know the wheel’s been invented, but …

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• Sundry Withdrawals For Power7 And Power7+ Gear

  August 30, 2017 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  The sunrise of the Power9 systems is moving in slow motion and we no longer expect to see shiny new iron using this state of the art processor running either IBM i or AIX until sometime early in 2018. It is looking like maybe March or April at the moment. But the sunsetting of vintage Power Systems iron that will be displaced by the arrival of the Power9 machines is proceeding.

  Trying to figure out what is being ripped out of the IBM catalog, and when it will be removed from the sales channel, is more difficult than trying to …

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• Four Hundred Monitor, August 30

  August 30, 2017 Dan Burger

  Implementing new IT solutions should help a company or department run more smoothly, effectively, and efficiently, yet trepidation about the process is a frequent occurrence. Whether it’s refactoring a database, modernizing applications, upgrading the system or ERP software – those tasks can be intimidating. Two IT pros provide insights into creating good strategic planning, clear and honest communication, and conscious time-management with the goal of alleviating stress by setting expectations, establishing security and building confidence.

  This week’s Monitor also includes tips on getting more value from your RPG, evaluation of IBM i security fiction, and a new training opportunity for …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 19, Numbers 33 And 34

  August 30, 2017 Doug Bidwell

  My perspective on PTFs is that the development teams at IBM work with me and for me. They are part of my development team. They are there to help me over the rough spots and to keep me focused on the application side without distractions from the operating system and licensed internal code side.

  When I am distracted, I am costing my company money or one of my customers money, and the shortest path to a solution should be taken to get me back to focusing on the applications. Toward that end, I have developed the “15 Minute” rule: If …

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• Why Not Overclock Power Chips For IBM i?

  August 28, 2017 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Remember way back in 2000, when Intel, the world’s largest chip manufacturer and now the world’s dominant supplier of processors in the datacenter, said that it would be able to deliver processors that run at 10 GHz by 2011. Well, that was six years ago, and that sure as hell did not happen then and it is not going to happen now. But if anyone can crank the clocks high on a processor, it is IBM with its Power and System z engines, and we think it can push them a little higher and give certain customers who …

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• Syncsort CEO Discusses Vision Deal, Product Plans

  August 28, 2017 Alex Woodie

  Josh Rogers isn’t one to get overly animated, at least in an over-the-top “Ra Ra” kind of way. But in a conversation with IT Jungle last week, there was no disputing the Syncsort CEO’s excitement at closing the acquisition of Vision Solutions and the prospect of delivering big data integration products to a new pool of IBM i customers.

  To quickly recap: In early July, Centerbridge Partners, a large equity capital firm, acquired controlling stakes in both Vision Solutions and Syncsort, and announced plans to merge the two companies under the Syncsort brand. Two weeks ago, the vendors formally …

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• Guru: Legible Hexadecimal

  August 28, 2017 Ted Holt

  Since I am a normal red-blooded human being, I try to make life as easy as possible for myself. I don’t do very well in general, but occasionally I manage to afford myself a bit of comfort. Recently I had to deal with long strings of hexadecimal digits. Trying to read that stuff was more than I could deal with, so I wrote a function to help me.

  It’s easy to think of hexadecimal literal as strings because they contain the letters A through F. However, they are not strings, but numbers. We use the letters A through F for …

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• As I See It: So You’re Thinking About Retirement

  August 28, 2017 Victor Rozek

  If your IT career spanned the AS/400 years, you may be of an age when you are considering retirement. Certainly, if both your health and your bank account are reasonably robust, retirement can be as sweetly anticipated as a tax refund. The prospect of leisure and travel, or just putting a halt to the daily grind, exerts a strong gravitational pull. But reality is like the spellchecker of the imagination: it corrects misconceptions.

  We are, in fact, absurdly encouraged to view decline as the Golden Years. Retirement has long been romanticized by everyone from the AARP, to financial planners, to …

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