• Four Hundred Monitor, July 26

  July 26, 2023 Jenny Thomas

  The heat wave has finally hit the western parts of the U.S. after a relatively mild June, and the temps have been extreme. The temperature is not the only thing that is rising, though. In the computing world, the cost of a data breach has also reached record highs, according to IBM’s recent Cost of a Data Breach report. Interestingly, the report, the link to which you can find in our Top Stories section below, also found that despite the rising cost, companies are still reluctant to invest in cybersecurity. Read on for more about cybersecurity and the other ” …

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• Power Expert Care Tweaked With Add-On, Fixed Price Services

  July 26, 2023 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  In the wake of the Kyndryl spinout last year, Big Blue has been tweaking and repackaging the services it offers through what used to be called Lab Services and what is now known as Technology Expert Labs, offered through its Technology Services division.

  The Power Expert Care services, which are designed to offer supplemental support for customers using IBM i, AIX, or Linux on Power Systems, there are two tiers, Advanced and Premium. (You would think there would be a Standard or Basic tier, but there isn’t. Maybe there will be some day. . . . ) This week, IBM …

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• Big Blue’s New “WebSpheres” To Surf The Container And AI Waves

  July 24, 2023 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Without question, there is a lot of money that can be made on AI training and inference, as is aptly shown by the financial results of Nvidia. That company, which is the darling of Wall Street these days, has gone from datacenter wannabe to datacenter giant in the course of a decade and a half. It has been fascinating to watch, but it is as much the result of lucky timing as hard work, as Jensen Huang, the company’s co-founder and chief executive officer, admitted from the beginning.

  Nvidia has been working on parallel computing architectures for accelerating HPC workloads …

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• Serious New IBM i Vulns Exposed by Silent Signal – More On the Way

  July 24, 2023 Alex Woodie

  Two new vulnerabilities in core components of the IBM i operating system were disclosed by IBM last week, including one that impacts Performance Tools and another in Facsimile Support for i. Both vulnerabilities were discovered by Silent Signal, the Hungarian firm that discovered the recent DDM vulnerability, and both are considered high risk flaws that should be patched immediately.

  More security flaws exist in IBM i that will be exposed in the months to come, the company says.

  The first new flaw, CVE-2023-30988, pertains to a local privilege escalation vulnerability discovered in Facsimile Support for i, a native IBM …

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• Power Systems Down A Bit, But Holding Steady In Q2

  July 24, 2023 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Considering that we are over a year into the Power10 entry and midrange server upgrade cycle, and almost two years into the Power10 high-end cycle, the fact that the Power Systems server business is only down a few points in the second quarter is, well, normal. As in the old normal where things have a natural ebb and flow and the business is not just in a kind of 45 degree decline like we saw a decade ago.

  This is what happens when Big Blue sticks to its enterprise computing knitting and is not distracted by the money-losing proposition of …

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• The Last Power8 Machine Gets End Of Service Notice

  July 24, 2023 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Back in November 2022, amongst a slew of other machinery, customers using the vast majority of the Power Systems servers based on the Power8 processor were warned that IBM was cutting off its maintenance and support for these machines effective between March and October 2024. That may sound like a long time from now, but it really isn’t when you have to hustle a system upgrade, complete with application software, through the budgetary and testing hoops.

  We wrote about those Power8 system withdrawals here, and in case you need to dig out the notice again, the new IBM Documentation system …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 25, Number 30

  July 24, 2023 Doug Bidwell

  The security vulnerabilities in the IBM i software stack are coming in waves. This week, there are three more to report, two of which we detail separately in this issue.

  First, we have Security Bulletin: IBM Facsimile Support for i is vulnerable to local privilege escalation (CVE-2023-30988), which you can find out more about here. The issue can be fixed by applying a PTF to IBM i.  IBM i releases 7.5, 7.4, 7.3, and 7.2 installed with 5798-FAX version V5R8M0 will be fixed. IBM i Release, 5798-FAX,V5R8M0 PTF Number SI83583 for 7.5, 7.4, 7.3, 7.2 – read the cover …

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• A Slew Of Power Systems Features Are Being Sunsetted

  July 17, 2023 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Big Blue has long since stopped selling Power8 machinery and has been winding down sales of Power9-based systems as its Power10 machines, which made their debut in late 2021 and early 2022, are ascending. So, it is natural that features for Power8 and Power9 machinery are being withdrawn. But even some features with the newer Power10 machines are also being withdrawn, in some cases because supplies are running out and in other cases because better features have been introduced.

  You have to keep up with these things so you can get what you need before IBM stops selling whatever that …

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• SoCal Gears Up for OCEAN Tech Con 23

  July 17, 2023 Alex Woodie

  Southern California’s IBM i community is getting ready for the biggest event on its calendar: OCEAN Tech Con 23. The three-day, in-person event kicks off next week with a full slate of speakers and presenters who will discuss the latest advances in the platform.

  The OCEAN user group’s annual summer soiree starts the morning of Thursday, July 27, with a one-hour keynote by IBM’s IBM i chief technology officer, chief architect, and distinguished engineer Steve Will. The title of the address, “IBM i @ 35: integrate + innovate,” gives you an idea what Will will talk about.

  The educational component …

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• The Majority Of Large Enterprises To Boost IT Staff This Year

  July 17, 2023 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  The sample is small, the data is a little bit musty, but the news is good.

  Back in October and November last year, the market researchers at Gartner did a survey of chief information officers at large enterprises and 501 people responded from all over the world; 182 of them were from North America, Europe/Africa/Middle East, and Asia/Pacific, which means by definition that Central America and South America were over-represented a bit in the survey. So take these results with a grain of salt, and maybe some pepper.

  By Gartner’s definition, a large enterprise is one with $1 billion or …

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