• Investing In IBM i: Adventures In Venture Capital

  August 28, 2017 Dan Burger

  The IBM i community was stirred last month when Vision Solutions, the dominant software vendor in the high availability arena, was acquired by a private equity company that believes the IBM i market is worthy of an investment estimated in the hundreds of millions of dollars. That’s some serious cash. In addition to buying software, intellectual property, and a significant customer base, this private equity firm’s deal commands attention among IBM i observers who have seen investments lead to consolidation of software and service providers.

  For now, it looks like a trend without end for a handful of vendors …

  Read more

• Firm Brokers MuleSoft’s Passage Into IBM i World

  August 16, 2017 Alex Woodie

  Open source is not the best model for everything in the computing world. But you’d be hard-pressed to find a better use for open source than data and application integration, which are notoriously messy, expensive, and brittle. Which is why, if you’re not familiar with MuleSoft, you likely will be in the future.

  MuleSoft got its start over 10 years ago when Ross Mason decided to start developing an open integration platform. Mason thought: Why should developers toil to build custom-coded integrations over and over again when it could be built correctly one time and then shared with the world? …

  Read more

• If RDi Was Free, Would You Go For A Ride?

  August 16, 2017 Dan Burger

  Some interesting developments have occurred with the Rational Developer for i (RDi) team. First came the extraction from IBM Software Group and relocation within the IBM i development organization. Then came the integration of RDi development efforts involving IBM and HelpSystems. What’s next? Perhaps a free lightweight version of RDi designed to entice more IBM i developers to trade in their old tools and take a closer look at what they can gain with RDi.

  A new request for enhancement (RFE #108558) may gather enough momentum to bring a free RDi to market. That leads to the question of whether …

  Read more

• Who Says You Can’t Go Home Again

  August 16, 2017 Victor Rozek

  As anyone who has ever managed an IT installation can attest, computer technology offers equal measures of empowerment and annoyance. On one hand, computers allow us to run our businesses on a scale of complexity unimaginable just a few decades ago. Multiple platforms churn in multiple time zones, global data transfers clog the ether; and people from different cultures, speaking different languages, are able to collaborate digitally for the good of the enterprise.

  On the other hand, management must perpetually contend with the aggravation of the archaic. Even the finest computers and most elegant software are cursed by the specter …

  Read more

• Four Hundred Monitor, August 16

  August 16, 2017 Dan Burger

  If you read Steve Will’s blogs and follow his itinerary of speaking engagements, you wonder if the guy is on pace to set a record for promoting the IBM i platform. And we don’t even know all the behind the scenes stuff. The strategy is simple. Have Steve Will talk and blog until every IBM i customer realizes that this system is fully capable of running a modern business. But that the message has to reach beyond the IBM i faithful. By his own admission, he is reaching about 1 percent of those who should be hearing the story. He …

  Read more

• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 19, Number 32

  August 16, 2017 Doug Bidwell

  Greetings IBM i shops. As you know, HIPER PTFs come out every two weeks, and the level is incremented each time they come out. The V7R1 HIPER level hit 201 this week. That means that V7R1 has been around at least 402 weeks. So in September we should hit the 408th week, or, at 52 weeks per year, four years for V7R1.

  Scanning the list of Last Updated dates for all levels at all releases, August and September are traditionally dead months. Not much happens in PTF Land. V6R1 had a flurry of updates back in 2015 in those months, …

  Read more

• Does IBM i Need More Databases?

  August 14, 2017 Alex Woodie

  There are many things that differentiate IBM i from other platforms, including its storage, security, and programming models. But one of the most unique aspects of the IBM i platform is its integrated DB2 database, which is used exclusively by practically all IBM i customers. You just don’t find this on other platforms. But perhaps it’s time for IBM i to diversify its database support?

  In many respects, DB2 for i is the platform’s greatest strength. IBM i is renowned for its transaction processing prowess that drives ERP and other line of business applications, and DB2 for i (formerly DB2/400, …

  Read more

• IBM Moves HMC Management To Native Power Server, LPARs

  August 14, 2017 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Out of band management is not a new thing in the IT sector, and many of the best and most sophisticated pieces of software in the world have a distinct management console of some sort that gathers up the state of a machine or collection of machines and uses it to initially configure those devices and to coerce them to behave themselves despite their nature for electronic mischief.

  The Hardware Management Console, or HMC, has been around for so long in the AS/400, iSeries, System i, and IBM i line for so long we can’t remember when people were not …

  Read more

• Guru: Teraspace To The Rescue

  August 14, 2017 Jon Paris

  Hey, Jon:

  My team has been trying to resolve a problem for the last few weeks and they are running into several obstacles. The main one has to do with RPG restrictions for data structure length.

  We use a third-party program to process transactions. In the latest version, the vendor has increased the length of the fields in the data structure that we have to pass them. After our programs were changed to accommodate this increase, the RPG program would not compile because the DS exceeds 16,733,104 bytes. The vendor has told us to use teraspace but by itself that …

  Read more

• Ransomware Raises The Stakes For Data Insurance

  August 14, 2017 Adam Roth

  In May, the WannaCry ransomware attack flooded news headlines worldwide. With over 230,000 infected computers, covering a span of roughly 150 countries, it was one of the larger attacks we have seen in some time. WannaCry spread through various operating systems but appeared to have had little impact on IBM i shops.

  However, even though IBM i have the reputation as being an impenetrable operating system doesn’t mean that they are immune to attacks. If an IBM i shop has a connected Windows network on a shared drive with the IBM i host, a virus can easily enter and spread …

  Read more

Previous Articles Next Articles