• Join Us For The IBM i On The Public Cloud Webinar

  December 4, 2019 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  After so many years of waiting, it looks like IBM i shops are going to have a wide variety of options when it comes to acquiring true cloud computing to either replace or augment their on premises systems.

  IBM, Google, Microsoft, and Skytap all are offing slices of Power9 machines, which complement the cloudy and hosted infrastructure that has been available for a number of years from Connectria, iInTheCloud, UCG Technologies, LightEdge Solutions, Data Storage Corp, Source Data Products, Secure Information and Services, and First Option IT have offerings that fall on the spectrum from traditional hosting to cloud as …

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• Db2 For IBM i 7.3 Hits A Bad Patch

  December 2, 2019 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  As you know, we are among the people in the IBM i community who are always telling you to keep current on your PTF patches for the best operating system available on Power Systems. (No, we are not talking about AIX or Linux.) But every now and again, as happens with all operating systems, something gets fixed and the fix is worse than the problem it was solving.

  That has apparently happened with the database patches for the Db2 for i relational database management system embedded in the IBM i 7.3 release once the Db2 Group patches from November 13 …

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• Converge Technology Emerges As Reseller Powerhouse

  December 2, 2019 Alex Woodie

  Here’s a computer company you may not have heard about: Converge Technology Solutions. Over the past two years, the publicly traded Toronto, Canada-based company has completed numerous acquisitions of value added resellers (VARs) and private cloud providers that ply the IBM Power Systems waters – including Key Information Systems, Corus360, and Essex Technology Group, to name a few – and there’s no reason to think it will stop in 2020.

  Converge Technology Solutions was founded in 2017, when it began executing its goal to acquire a number of smaller VARs and consolidate the “fragmented” reseller landscape, according to chief executive …

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• Power S812 Gets Another Reprieve, And Other Power Systems Stuff

  December 2, 2019 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  For whatever reason, Big Blue did not create a cut-down version of the Power9 entry server aimed at the smallest of the small businesses that run themselves on the IBM i platform. Meaning there was no Power S912 or Power S912 Mini replacement for the Power S812 and its specially priced Power S812 Mini. (The former is based on the Power9 chip, while the latter is based on the older Power8 chip, which has a lot less oomph per core.)

  Back in March, IBM extended the life of the Power S812 and its Mini variant until November 29 of this …

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• IBM i Marketing: Not A Thankless Job

  November 25, 2019 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  For over one decade of the three that I called New York City my home, I was the president of the board of directors in the co-operative apartment building in which I lived. For many years, I ran a half rack of servers and storage in the kitchenette in our apartment to support IT Jungle’s website and subscription database, and I ran T1 lines up the outside of the building and in through the window. It was unconventional running a business that way, but there was no cloud computing as we know it, and certainly not at the prices you …

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• Microsoft Elaborates On Its IBM i-Azure Strategy

  November 4, 2019 Alex Woodie

  Microsoft has launched various efforts over the years to entice IBM midrange users to adopt their products. The fledgling multi-user operating system, Windows NT, was the target of those first efforts, followed by ever-more-capable versions of Windows Server. Now the software giant is holding its Azure cloud as the destination for IBM i shops. The big question is: Will IBM i shops make the move?

  Last week, IT Jungle talked with Eric Lockard, the Microsoft corporate vice president in charge of Azure Dedicated, a department within Azure that focuses on hosting non-standard platforms in the cloud. The company has found …

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• The Skinny On NVM-Express Flash And IBM i

  November 4, 2019 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  A couple of weeks ago, buried in the October Power Systems announcements, we told you about the new NVM-Express flash cards that Big Blue brought to the Power iron and that are specifically enabled in the IBM i 7.4 release with Technology Refresh 1, or TR1. We didn’t have a lot of detail back then about the new drives other than some capacities and pricing, but we know more now and we are going to tell you what we know.

  We will circle back with Big Blue and have a discussion about what the addition of NVM-Express flash means – …

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• Java License Fallout Continues Impacting IBM i Shops

  October 23, 2019 Alex Woodie

  Oracle’s decision to restrict the previously free distribution of Java version 8 tools and runtimes is impacting the entire IT industry. In our little neck of the woods, the decision to charge businesses for using Oracle’s Java has forced IBM i shops to take a hard look at the technology platform, and in some cases look for alternative solutions.

  Oracle ruffled feathers in the Java community in 2017, when it made substantial changes to its Java roadmap. The company announced that Java Standard Edition (SE) version 8, which is a legacy version of Java but is still in widespread use, …

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• Monoliths, Microservices, and IBM i Modernization: Part 2

  October 14, 2019 Alex Woodie

  Microservices are the future, right? After reading part one of this series, you can be excused for thinking that. Breaking up applications into smaller components brings clear benefits to both the development and operations staff, and clearly is an architectural approach that has a lot of momentum. But it turns out there might be practical limits to how far the microservices approach can take us.

  “Loosely coupled, yet tightly integrated.” That phrase became something of a running joke at an Infor conference attended by this reporter several years ago. The company at the time was betting heavily on its ION …

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• An 11-Core Power9 Makes The Rounds, And Other Hardware Enhancements

  October 14, 2019 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Those of us who go way back in the IBM midrange are used to rhythm in hardware announcements. In the early days, there were several announcements per year as new processors were rolled out across the product line and new peripherals for various kinds of storage and networking were rolled out. The pace was brisk back in the day, with nearly annual processor upgrades and associated updates to systems.

  These days, systems are really updated every three years or so, but still, there is the vestigial spring/fall announcement cadence when Big Blue now does Technology Refreshes for the IBM i …

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