• IBM i Security Concern Hits All-Time High, But Solution Adoption Lags, Fortra’s Marketplace Study Shows

  February 7, 2024 Alex Woodie

  Security is the number one concern of IBM i professionals, according to Fortra’s Marketplace Study, the seventh straight year that security has topped the charts. More survey respondents chose security as their top concern than any other year. Despite the growing security concern, there doesn’t seem to be a corresponding increase in adoption of security tools, the survey data show.

  Fortra released the 2024 IBM i Marketplace Study last month, representing the 10th straight year that the company (formerly HelpSystems) has conducted the survey and published the findings. Last fall, Fortra surveyed 270 IBM i professionals from around the world, …

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• Four Hundred Monitor, February 7

  February 7, 2024 Jenny Thomas

  We finally flipped the page into February after the year that was January. (Did January seem extra long to anyone else?) While everyone seems to be proceeding with caution in the face of these uncertain economic times and world unrest, we are nonetheless proceeding. This week’s Top Stories continue to focus on AI and cybersecurity, and all things IBM, and that’s probably not going to change any time soon. We are also happy to see our calendar starting to fill back up, so be sure to take a look to see what learning opportunities have been added.

  Top Stories From

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• Hey, Where Did All Of The IBM i Redbooks Go?

  February 7, 2024 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Have you read any good IBM i Redbooks lately? Probably not, and we want to know why.

  Our intrepid colleague, Doug Bidwell, of IBM i PTF Guide fame among many other things, pointed out to us this week that it has been a long, long time since we have seen a Redbook or even a Redpaper concerning the IBM i platform. This seems peculiar to us, considering all of the new features and functions that have gone into IBM i 7.4 and IBM i 7.5. And even IBM i 7.3, which is going the way of all flesh.

  If you …

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• The State Of The Power Systems Base 2024: The Systems

  February 5, 2024 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  The foundation of any system is its processor. It is the central processing unit, or CPU, which used to be part of what we called the main frame in a multi-frame system, that ultimately does the calculations that make computing useful. There have always been many things that wrap around this CPU that turn it into a complete system – memory, networking, other kinds of I/O, various levels of storage, all in their own hierarchies. But if you ask someone what kind of system they have, beyond the vendor and the brand, the next bit of data they will …

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• IBM Retired Db2 Web Query; It’s Time You Did, Too

  February 5, 2024 Bill Langston

  Just as you were returning to work to begin the new year, IBM published a security bulletin alerting Db2 Web Query customers that the software is “vulnerable to a remote attacker bypassing security restrictions or executing arbitrary code, to a local authenticated attacker obtaining sensitive information, or to denial of service.” The Four Hundred reported on the vulnerability in detail here.

  The security bulletin only references release 2.4.0 of the now withdrawn Db2 Web Query software, but we suspect that is only because IBM doesn’t test unsupported releases. We believe the security vulnerabilities listed in the bulletin also exist …

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• 2024 IBM i Predictions Part 3 – The Final Chapter

  February 5, 2024 Alex Woodie

  Punxsutawney Phil, the famous groundhog who forecast an early spring on Friday, is said to have a long-term success rate of about 31 percent with his forecasts. What’s the accuracy rate of the IBM i experts who contribute to these yearly predictions? To borrow a line from the Magic 8 Ball, the answer is hazy at the moment. But one thing is clear: The IBM i ecosystem as a whole maintains an unabashedly optimistic and sunny disposition.

  One of the brighter stars in the IBM i galaxy, Connectria regional sales director Peg Tuttle sees several trends emerging in the …

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• IBM i Shops Are Still Getting Their Generative AI Acts Together

  February 5, 2024 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  One of the great things about participating in the annual IBM i Marketplace Survey put together by Fortra – and one of the reasons why our beloved colleague Dan Burger helped HelpSystems create the survey a decade ago – was that we get to have input into how the survey is created and how it evolves over time.

  During the survey, our host Tom Huntington, executive vice president of technical solutions at Fortra, does an instant poll for attendees, and rather than ask the same question as last year, which was about where people get their information about the IBM …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 26, Number 5

  February 5, 2024 Doug Bidwell

  Here is the latest on the mystery of the disappearing QSYS library. If you use SF99740 and SF99741 downloaded from this week, then there shouldn’t be any issues with applying any of the groups. The fixing PTF SI85707 is included in the latest DB group, even though it does not have a new level and does not have a cover letter. If you are using either of those Group PTF orders from prior weeks, then the workaround we described last week is the best course of action.

  Be careful here. When you order SF99740, you will receive several .bin files. …

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• Power Systems Grows For The Second Year In A Row

  January 29, 2024 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Here at The Four Hundred, we take good news very seriously, and so we will just cut to the chase scene and tell you that IBM’s Power Systems business has grown for the second year in a row.

  Take that in for a second. Savor it.

  Think about the dozen years of dramatic decline we saw in the RISC/Unix and IBM i parts of the Power Systems business in the wake of the Great Recession in 2009, when the X86 platform from Intel finally got enough features – as did Windows Server and Linux – to compete effectively against …

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• The IBM i Base Is Ready To Keep Investing In The Future

  January 29, 2024 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  We are at the beginning of a new year, and of course that means that it was time for us to participate in the annual IBM i Marketplace Survey webinar, which is sponsored by Fortra and which is now in its 10th year. We enjoy the webinar that Forta hosts to have a bunch of people from IBM and myself riff on what the survey results mean – and what they don’t mean.

  Our host on the webinar was Tom Huntington, executive vice president of technical solutions at Fortra, and we were joined by Douglas Gibbs and Dan Sundt, who …

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