• UCG And HelpSystems Make Acquisitions

  January 25, 2017 Alex Woodie

  A common prediction for the New Year is that we’ll see more mergers and acquisition (M&A) activity in the IBM i marketplace. That refrain struck a truthful note just a week into 2017, with two IBM i vendors, UCG Technologies and HelpSystems, making deals of their own.

  UCG Technologies wheeled and dealed to buy E-Safe Technologies, a Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania-based provider of IT services that counts IBM i as a specialty. Formerly known as Premiere Technologies, E-Safe was founded in 1989, and had more than 250 customers located from Pittsburgh to the Great Lakes area, including a good number …

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• IBM i Trends, Concerns, And Observations

  January 23, 2017 Dan Burger

  There is far more going on in IBM i shops than many non-IBM i people would expect. And the truth of the matter is that some IBM i shops might be surprised to find out what other shops are up to. The IBM i Marketplace Survey is one of our windows into that world. And it’s just been compiled for the third consecutive year. We have been watching and reporting on this survey and the trends it identifies because it is one of the best finger-in-the-wind indicators of the directions IBM i shops are headed.

  There are more than a …

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• Drilling Down Into IBM’s System Group

  January 23, 2017 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  It is a new year, and we are all looking forward to a growing economy and some much needed competition for compute in the datacenter as there is a resurgence of interest in the Power processor and a growing probability that ARM server chip makers, particularly Qualcomm and Applied Micro, are going to see some traction this year.

  It is with this in mind that we ponder IBM’s fourth quarter financial results, which were announced last Thursday, and more specifically think about what may be in the cards for the Power Systems platform in 2017 and beyond. First, let’s go …

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• Guru: How To Use Global Variables In SQL Scripts

  January 23, 2017 Michael Sansoterra

  Hey, Mike:

  I’m writing SQL scripts to do some administrative work. These scripts are run in iNavigator’s RunSQL scripts utility and use the special CL: directive to execute an IBM i command. I stumbled across the CREATE VARIABLE statement and wondered if I could use an SQL variable to substitute a library name within the OS commands.

  For example, if I define something like the following in iNavigator:

  CREATE OR REPLACE VARIABLE QGPL/LIB CHAR(10) DEFAULT 'JOE';
  

  Can I then use the LIB variable in a CL: command as follows?

  CL:  DSPLIB LIB(LIB) OUTPUT(*PRINT);
  

  –Guru Reader

   

  Unfortunately, GLOBAL VARIABLES cannot …

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• Doctor Frank Talks Power With Vision

  January 23, 2017 Alex Woodie

  Vision Solutions landed a pretty popular guest for the inaugural episode of its new PowerTalk podcast last month. Former IBM chief scientist Doctor Frank Soltis, the Father of the AS/400, shared stories about the sudden popularity of memory-oriented architectures, the limitations of the System/38, and the origins of the MIMIX product.

  Becky Hjellming, Vision’s director of product strategy, was excited to have such a distinguished IBMer on her very first PowerTalk podcast. She started out by asking Soltis about his recent COMMON Europe tour, during which he made several predictions about how the computing world is about to change in …

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• IBM Gives Power Systems Rebates For Linux Workloads

  January 23, 2017 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Big Blue has made no secret whatsoever that it wants to ride the Linux wave up with the Power Systems platform, and its marketeers are doing what they can to sweeten the hardware deals as best they can without adversely affecting the top and bottom line at IBM in general and the Power Systems division in particular to help that Linux cause along.

  To be precise, IBM has rolled out another in a line of its “first in location” rebate offerings, which was a common tactic when IBM was trying to sell AS/400 or RS/6000 systems against competitive platforms or …

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• A Power Systems Wish List For The Year Ahead

  January 18, 2017 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  It is the beginning of a new year and that means a bunch of different things. First, we are not quite as rested as we would like, but we are also ready to get on with it. It usually means that people are making resolutions to change their own behavior for the better and making prognostications about what may or may not happen in the future.

  Sometimes we are not in a mood to prepare or predict, and as this year gets rolling I am in much more of a mood to prescribe. Sometimes, you can’t wait for the future …

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• What Will This Year Bring For IBM i?

  January 18, 2017 Alex Woodie

  A hearty if belated welcome to 2017! In what has become something of an IT Jungle tradition, we’re turning the microphone over to you, the IBM i community, to share your thoughts on what the New Year may bring to the platform, what it may mean to the vendors that play the market, and how it will impact the people who make everything possible.

  Trevor Perry, an IBM i evangelist and consultant with IBM i modernization vendor Fresche (which acquired looksoftware several years ago), leads off our new round of predictions.

  “We’ll see more talk about blockchain, especially in …

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• Guru: SQL PL, WHILE And REPEAT Loops

  January 18, 2017 Ted Holt

  In earlier editions of this august publication, I covered the SQL PL looping structures that I consider to be the most useful. Today I cover the remaining looping structures. I cover them for completeness, but also because what I consider to be most useful may not be what you consider to be most useful.

  To review, the FOR loop provides a simple way to process the rows of a result set. LOOP structure is versatile, providing the freedom to exit a loop from any point. The remaining loop structures are WHILE and REPEAT.

  The WHILE loop is a top-tested loop. …

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• Mad Dog 21/21: As Ginni Bows Out

  January 18, 2017 Hesh Wiener

  In 1993, when Lou Gerstner became the boss of IBM, it was failing under inept John Akers. A decade later Gerstner passed IBM’s leadership to Sam Palmisano. Gerstner had revived IBM’s computer business, developed a huge services operation and regained the admiration of customers.

  But Palmisano was no Gerstner. The IBM he left to Ginni Rometty in 2012 was, beneath the surface, as loused up as it had been under Akers. Moreover, Rometty, who knows IBM needs to invent a new future, is saddled with underlings who often seem to be looking back rather than ahead.

  IBM’s largest …

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