• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 19, Number 5

  February 8, 2017 Doug Bidwell

  For the past nineteen years now, Doug Bidwell, the PTF slinger who owns IBM midrange business partner DLB Systems Associates, has been putting together a guide to help OS/400, i5/OS, and IBM i shops figure out what to patch in their operating systems for midrange gear every week.

  For as long as we can remember — and that is not long as we are getting a bit gray or white, depending — we have been publishing Bidwell’s IBM i PTF Guide, and we are thrilled to be getting it back on press and to be incorporating it into the …

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• Geared Down, Low Cost Power IBM i Box Rumored

  February 6, 2017 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  We have been talking for a long time about the impedance mismatch between some IBM i shops in terms of what processing, memory, storage, and I/O capacity they need and what IBM delivers to them with each new generation of Power Systems iron. For many shops, even the smallest machine that Big Blue currently delivers is too much of a box.

  This is a testament to the efficiency of the IBM i platform and its integrated relational database management system in that it takes very little iron to get useful work. It also shows that for many customers, transaction processing …

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• Vision ‘Laser Focused’ On IBM i And Power Following Double-Take Sale

  February 6, 2017 Alex Woodie

  Vision Solutions is now free to spend more time and energy building solutions for its core IBM i and Power Systems customer base now that it has sold Double-Take and the Windows high availability business to Carbonite for $65 million, executives with the company tell IT Jungle.

  “It’s hard to divide the brain between two technologies that require a lot of attention, and they both required a ton of attention,” Vision Solutions executive vice president and chief technology officer Alan Arnold said. “Instead of dividing our time, our time can be focused like a laser with what we need …

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• Guru: Passing Parameters From The Command Line

  February 6, 2017 Jon Paris

  In my previous “Fundamentals” tips, I discussed the importance of making sure parameters are the correct size and how to correctly handle omitted parameters. In this tip I want to address what has to be the most frequently asked question about parameters.

  The most frequently asked parameter question comes in many forms, such as:

  • “How do you pass them from the command line?”
  • “Why do I see garbage in the back end of my character parameters?”
  • “Why are my numeric values passed incorrectly?”

  Usually these questions arise when a programmer wants to simplify the testing of a program and does …

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• Mobile, Cloud, And Analytics Spark Growth For VAI

  February 6, 2017 Dan Burger

  In the ERP software business, you must be on your game to compete with the massive, meat-eating beasts that that have devoured huge portions of the market. VAI competes very well. Its combination of innovation and customer service propelled the company to 11 percent revenue growth in 2016, according to a company statement released last week. That’s not bad at all for a relatively small fish swimming with the sharks.

  VAI didn’t buy its way into the ERP market like Oracle and Infor. Its growth is predominantly organic and its reputation is built on customer service. Its 30-year history …

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• Some Power Systems Tweaks And Sales Withdrawals

  February 6, 2017 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  We didn’t expect any major announcements from IBM’s Power Systems division here in the first couple of weeks of the year, but the company has made done a bunch of little things that might affect some IBM i shops that you ought to be aware of just the same.

  In announcement letter 117-013, which was put out on January 24, IBM made good on its promise to make the new I/O peripherals and memory cards that came out with the midrange Power 850C system announced last year available on the prior generation Power 850 box, which debuted in May …

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• Lack Of Ciphers In IBM i 7.1 Raises Concern

  February 1, 2017 Alex Woodie

  Companies running IBM i version 7.1 may be up for a rude awakening when they try to establish an encrypted communication session with a trading partner. According to several reports from users, IBM i servers on V7.1 are being blocked from accessing partner systems via SSL/TLS because they’re not using the latest encryption algorithms required by their partners.

  “There are a number of ciphers major trading partners are insisting you use for SSL communications which are not available on IBM i 7.1,” Rob Berendt, a system and security analyst at Group Dekko, says in a recent LinkedIn post titled Is …

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• See Something, Say Something

  February 1, 2017 Larry Bolhuis

  Only so many times can you see something and not say something. Time to say something.

  Most of you know I spend most of my time working on the most reliable, capable, flexible, and modern business system anywhere. And, of course, that would be IBM i on Power Systems. What you may not know is that I spent time driving a bus. I drove a very large bus with a huge wide bumper backed by an air horn. It was 40-feet long and 11 and a half feet high, weighed 40,000 pounds loaded, and was propelled by a supercharged V8 …

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• IBM i Priorities For 2017: Pivot To Defense

  February 1, 2017 Alex Woodie

  IBM i shops around the country will be concentrating their efforts more on defensive IT measures like security and high availability this year, as offensive measures like application modernization and mobile app development take a back seat on corporate to-do lists, according HelpSystems’ recent marketplace study.

  While digital transformation is still an important topic that IBM i shops should have on their radar, an even bigger priority in 2017 will be getting one’s digital house in order before hackers, disgruntled employees, or natural disasters conspire to compromise data and disrupt operations.

  That message came through loud and clear in HelpSystems …

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• 2017 IBM i Predictions: Take Three

  February 1, 2017 Alex Woodie

  In our third and final installment of our 2017 IBM i predictions series, we hear from several more IBM i professionals, including those from Profound Logic, Fresche, and Curbstone. We also hear from a prominent voice in the youth movement taking place in the IBM i community, as well as from the founder of the IBM i community’s newest local user group, MAGIC.

  Our first prediction comes from Stephanie Rabbani, a PHP expert who works at Alan Seiden Consulting. Rabbani has 14 years of developing on the IBM i platform and is involved in COMMON and other community …

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