• You’re Only As Old As The Applications You Feel

  June 24, 2020 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  You didn’t actually think that we would have forgotten that Sunday, June 21^st, was the 32^nd birthday of the Application System/400, did you? Of course we didn’t forget.

  It was also Father’s Day and the first day of summer, and to be perfectly frank (Soltis), I got a new smoker from my wife and I spent the afternoon learning about the joys of hickory smoked barbeque ribs. It is a gift that just keeps giving, because I made about 40 pounds of meat in various kinds and flavors because I needed to try everything all at once. …

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• Abacus Cloud Customers Enjoy Wider Ecosystem

  June 22, 2020 Alex Woodie

  For many years, Abacus Solutions ran its private IBM i cloud business out of a commercial datacenter close to its headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia. A few years back, Abacus decided to move its clients’ machines to a new datacenter, and in addition to getting better disaster preparedness, the move opened up a whole new ecosystem of services for its IBM i customers.

  The move from Abacus’ old datacenters into new datacenters was completed in 2019, but only recently did Abacus Solutions announce it. To get the low down on the big move, IT Jungle recently caught up with Patrick Schutz, …

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• IBM Wheels And Deals With Solution Edition Booster Pack

  June 8, 2020 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  A few weeks ago, we told you about the double memory and double I/O request for price quote (RPQ) special deals that IBM quietly rolled out in April without putting out any announcement letters and that are still in effect until June 30. So consider this a reminder that these deals are still out there and now is a good time to invest in new Power9 iron if you want to pay less for it than you otherwise might.

  But that is not all you can get. As it turns out, Big Blue is revamping its IBM i Solution Edition …

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• The End is Near for Zend Server Basic PHP

  May 20, 2020 Alex Woodie

  Zend Server Basic, the free PHP runtime used by thousands of IBM i shops, will cease being offered starting in July 2021. That’s the word from Perforce, the company that now owns Zend and its lineup of PHP tools and technologies. The replacement, of course, is the new community edition of PHP that became available via RPM in late 2019.

  Starting in 2006, Zend Technology began to develop a special version of its PHP runtime for IBM i, which was then called i5/OS. This offering, dubbed Zend Core for i5/OS, provided a familiar way for users of the iSeries server …

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• Raz-Lee Launches Web Interface for iSecurity Suite

  May 20, 2020 Alex Woodie

  Green screen interfaces were just fine in the old days of the AS/400. But today, many IBM i administrators would prefer a little more color with their screens. For IBM i shops that use software from Raz-Lee Security to police their system, they now have the option of using a Web-based graphical user interface (GUI) to interact with the company’s entire suite of tools.

  Raz-Lee has included GUIs in its offerings for many years. In the 2000s, it developed a Java-based interface for certain components of its iSecurity Suite. More recently, it developed an Eclipse-based product called the iSecurity GUI …

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• Welcome To The ‘Riehl’ World: Live, Hands-On IBM i Training

  May 18, 2020 Alex Woodie

  IBM i shops don’t have a ton of options available when it comes to online IBM i education these days. If you’re in the market to improve your skills, one of the outfits that should be on your shortlist is The 400 School, which is one of the few places left that offers hands-on IBM i education, according to the company’s founder and president, Dan Riehl.

  Riehl has had the kind of IBM midrange career that younger folks arriving on the platform today can only dream of. He has founded companies, written books, worked as a security consultant and …

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• Where Is IBM i?

  May 13, 2020 Alex Woodie

  If you’ve worked with the IBM i platform for any length of time, you realize that it can be hard to find. That’s true in the field, where companies sometimes aren’t even aware their applications are running on an IBM i system. But it’s also true when it comes to IBM’s own website, where you’d think i might be easier to find.

  Finding the IBM i homepage by navigating IBM’s website (www.ibm.com) is a bit like searching for the bathroom in the mall by walking the entire length of every floor. You know it has to be there. …

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• Having Second Thoughts About New Power Systems Iron?

  May 4, 2020 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Back in the day, when midrange computers cost somewhat more than they do today (without adjusting for inflation, mind you) and the amount of processing, memory, storage, and networking capacity of the boxes was absolutely miniscule compared to what we can buy today (but sufficient to the task), customers looking to add more AS/400 or iSeries capacity to their datacenter didn’t have to shop around a current N generation or N-1 generation machine, but they could also look into the secondhand market for used N-1, N-2, and even N-3 generation machines and try to buy capacity on the …

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• The X Factor: Home Base

  April 13, 2020 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  As you might imagine, New York City is on my mind a lot these days. And I have some advice for you as you are transitioning to tighter quarters and working from home – something I have been doing for 25 years now.

  Way back in the dawn of time, back in the wake of the launch of the AS/400 when I graduated from college and moved to New York City because it was the biggest, scariest thing that I could do, my brain sort of melted from the enormity of it all. At that time, a recession was underway …

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• imPower Technologies Embraces Switch to Online Learning

  April 8, 2020 Alex Woodie

  Traditional schools around the world are in turmoil as a result of the COVID-19 lockdown and the sudden switch to online learning. For Jim Buck and his new IBM i training venture, imPower Technologies, the sudden popularity of virtual education validates the work he and his colleagues have done to build an Internet-based IBM i education operation.

  “We’ve been preparing for this unknowingly for years now,” imPower Technologies Chief Operating Officer Michelle Lyons says. “Had we known, we couldn’t have prepared better.”

  Buck and Lyons started building imPower Technologies nearly three years ago to provide an online vehicle to deliver …

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