• IBM Puts On A Very Slick Power7+ Web Event

  February 11, 2013 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  As an IT journalist, I have to sit through more webcasts, interviews, and presentations than most of you have to sit through meetings. Some people put on a better show than others, and what I can tell you about the Webcast that the Power Systems division put together last Tuesday is by far the slickest thing I have seen in a long time. We’re talking Hollywood production values here, and to be honest, I was a bit surprised. If you didn’t catch the webcast for the February 5 announcements, you can catch the replay here, and it was a

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• Recognition Of IBM i Begins With Teamwork

  February 11, 2013 Yvonne Enselman

  Events keep reinforcing my opinion that it is imperative to address team building and communication between IT teams. Recently, I was talking to a friend about his frustration regarding his career as a developer. He has advanced skills and has been successful for more than 30 years on IBM midrange platforms. But he also has the feeling his every misstep will be used by the non-IBM i people in his organization as justification to move away from the platform. For the past 10 years, developers working on all platforms and languages have been hammered about modernizing skills to remain marketable.

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• As I See It: The Next Big (Destructive) Thing

  February 11, 2013 Victor Rozek

  If you’re an unemployed software engineer, I have good news and bad news for you. There are people hiring, but they go by the name of Al Qaeda. Welcome to the worm-eat-worm world of Cyber Warfare. It is the Next Big Military Thing, and everybody is gearing up to smite their godless foes without firing a shot. According to Jeffrey Carr, head of the digital security firm Taia Global, and author of Inside Cyber Warfare, Al Qaeda released a video last year in which they recruited hackers to better attack critical infrastructure. You have to wonder what inducements they

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• TR6 Brings Assorted Tech Goodies To IBM i

  February 11, 2013 Alex Woodie

  On February 5, IBM unveiled IBM i 7.1 TR6, the sixth Technology Refresh since IBM shifted to the agile development model for the OS in 2010. TR6 introduces a range of new technologies, including DB2 for i enhancements, support for USB flash drives, and support for the latest SSL standard, among others. Better manageability, high availability, and set-up capabilities round out the release. During the much-anticipated announcement day, most eyes were on the new Power7+ servers, including the sub-$6,000 Power Systems Model 710, the Power 720, the Power 730, the Power 740, the Power 750, and the Power 760. You

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• IBM Beefs Up The Power7+ Midrange With Double-Whammy Sockets

  February 11, 2013 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  While the entry part of the Power Systems market has been awaiting its Power7+ refresh, putting new processors and fatter memory and disk drives into essentially the same enclosures that were refreshed at the end of 2011, the midrange of the Power Systems line has been getting a little long in the tooth and was perhaps more in need of some re-engineering. And luckily for customers using midrange Power iron, that is precisely what IBM has done as part of the February 5 announcements. Not only is the Power 750+ getting a complete revamp while holding the core count steady,

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• Invader II: New Power7+ Machines Take On Entry X86 Iron

  February 11, 2013 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  It has been a long, long time since IBM both understood and did something dramatic about the competitive pressure that X86-based servers have put on its RISC-based systems. The last time I can remember Big Blue really going after X86 boxes was back when the AS/400 Model 170 “Invader” servers came out in February 1998. Although, to be fair, the Power 520 M15 and M25 models that came out a decade later were no slouches, either. This time around, we don’t have to wait a decade for IBM to get serious. With the entry Power7+ machines announced last Tuesday, it

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• Liaison Widens Partner Role in Selling Cloud Integration

  February 6, 2013 Alex Woodie

  Liaison Technologies this week launched an initiative to attract more partners to sell its cloud integration products and services. The company already has a successful business selling integration services through its cloud, thanks to the acquisition last year of HubSpan. Now, the idea is to grow the cloud service brokerage (CSB) business in any way possible, including letting partners sell it as a product, or even as their own white labeled services offering. Even before buying HubSpan and its sophisticated CSB offering last year, Liaison had many irons in the integration fire. Its pre-HubSpan repertoire included Electronic Commerce Server (ECS),

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• Admin Alert: When Was The Last Time That Library Got Backed Up And More

  February 6, 2013 Joe Hertvik

  This week, I’ll cover some new information about IBM i library backups, tell you how to specify which TCP/IP servers start whenever TCP/IP is started, and demonstrate a second technique for preventing unauthorized FTP access to your server. Let’s get started. Determining The Last Time A User Library Was Backed Up Checking the last time a user library was backed up is easy. You can check it from the green-screen by running the following Display Library Backup List (DSPBCKUP) command. DSPBCKUPL BCKUPL(*LIB) This command will display a screen that looks something like this. (Click graphic to enlarge.) This

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• Don’t Clone That Printer File!

  February 6, 2013 Hey, Ted

  I have a program that uses an externally described printer file to create a report. I need to change the program so that it writes some information to one spooled file and the remaining information to a separate spooled file. I could clone the printer file, but that would mean I’d have to change two files instead of one when I modify the report file in the future. Do I have to clone the printer file? –Mark No, Mark, you can build two or more reports from one printer file definition. Here’s how it’s done. Let’s start with a printer

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• What’s That Name, Again?

  February 6, 2013 Paul Tuohy

  One of the great things about writing articles and tips is that people will drop you a note to ask a question or tell you how much they liked (or disliked) what you wrote. But even better is when someone drops you a line to let you know they have taken what you wrote and extended it. Such was the case with my last tip, What’s That Name?, which described how to go about getting a “record layout” in Run SQL Scripts. I received an email from Lynne Noll, who said she had just written 128 stored procedures, and

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