• Guardicore Extends Zero-Trust Security to IBM i

  May 5, 2021 Alex Woodie

  Guardicore, which is trying to shake up the firewall market with its “micro segmentation” security solution, recently announced that it has extended its “zero-trust” approach to the IBM i platform. The offering will help IBM i shops close blind spots in their security posture by monitoring the server for signs of problems, the company says.

  Guardicore develops a software-based security solution called Centra that uses a micro segmentation approach to protecting IT assets from evolving security threats. Micro segmentation is a relatively new approach to cybersecurity that revolves around the concept of breaking the network down into multiple segments or …

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• A Cornucopia Of Compute

  May 3, 2021 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Ever since the advent of file servers in the 1980s, the rise of client/server system architectures in the early 1990s, and the commercialization of Internet networking in the middle 1990s, AS/400 shops and those using the progeny of that venerable IBM midrange computer have had hybrid computing platforms in the datacenter. Meaning, a mix of processor architectures and operating systems other than OS/400 or IBM i that was in some fashion associated with or actually doing mission critical work.

  In fact, as you all well know, there is in aggregate more raw compute in the X86 or RISC servers that …

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• Need An RPG Programmer? Nalashaa May Have You Covered

  April 19, 2021 Alex Woodie

  Companies that are having trouble finding RPG programmers to maintain IBM i applications may be interested in the services of Nalashaa Solutions, an IT services company that has nearly 200 RPG programmers at its disposal. In addition to expertise in healthcare, financial services, and manufacturing/distribution industries, the New Jersey-based company can help with application modernization, code documentation, and migration to the cloud, too.

  The RPG coder supply chain is an oft-discussed topic that incites passion in many people. In some parts of the country and the world, companies have no problem finding RPG programmers to hire. In other locales, you …

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• In The IBM i Trenches With: Computer Plus

  March 29, 2021 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Welcome to a new series in The Four Hundred called In The IBM i Trenches.

  We spend a lot of time talking to people at IBM and at the key suppliers of systems software, application software, and development tools for the IBM i platform. But the ecosystem is a lot bigger than these players. There are thousands of resellers, each serving tens to hundreds to sometimes thousands of customers, depending. There are suppliers of third party maintenance as well as technical support and all kinds of programming and system management services. And there are an increasing number of hosting …

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• Don’t Be A Blowhard

  March 22, 2021 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  One of the things that made the AS/400 a great system, as well as the System/36 and the System/32 and System/34 before it, was that there were entry machines that had enough oomph to support the data processing and storage needs of small businesses within a reasonable budget and in a system that didn’t need a datacenter or even a data closet. They could be tucked under a desk, or left to run beside them.

  Way back in the dawn of time, there were special machines, even smaller than the original AS/400-B10 and AS/400 -B20, that were even smaller and …

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• IBM i Bucking The Trends, Year After Year

  March 15, 2021 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  There are all kinds of stability that we consider when we choose and use systems. In the IBM i market in particular, we often talk about stability in the sense of the good programming practices that companies or their third-party software vendors have for the applications that they run. Or we might talk about the underlying stability of the operating system, relational database, or middleware software on which these applications depend. Or digging down further, we might talk about the reliability and longevity and predictability of the Power Systems hardware that underlies it all. And then, of course, there is …

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• The Prickly Pear Of Auto ID For IBM i

  December 16, 2020 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Good companies can batten down the hatches and pilot their enterprise through rough economic waters, but great companies identify opportunities and successfully pursue them whether or not times are good or bad. It takes a bit of pliability to be adaptable enough to not just accept change, but to embrace it, and also to be certain enough of your company and its customers to build a core user base and just serve those customers relentlessly with steady improvements. This is a tough balancing act, but if you look at the case studies, you find this balance is what gives companies …

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• To 2032 . . . And Beyond!

  December 7, 2020 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  As you sit here in 2020, can you even imagine 2032? Can you imagine beyond that? Oddly enough, I can imagine three or four decades out from here a lot more easily than I can do a dozen years, even though I know the error bars get longer and the probabilistic clouds get fuzzier the further into the future you wander with your mind. So what does it mean, really, when Big Blue commits to support the IBM i platform at least until 2032, a mere dozen years away in a platform that, depending on how you want to …

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• Frank Soltis Discusses A Possible Future for Single-Level Storage

  November 23, 2020 Alex Woodie

  Single-level storage is one of the most unique and compelling characteristics of the architecture underlying the IBM i server and its predecessor business machines. But how would it look running in a massive supercomputer or deep learning system? According to Frank Soltis, who spoke last week at COMMON Europe’s virtual event, it’s something that’s being considered.

  Doctor Frank, of course, is a much-revered figure in the history of the IBM midrange line. He was part of the team at the IBM lab in Rochester, Minnesota, that led the development of the single-level storage memory architecture in the S/38 machine that …

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• IBM i Turns In Good Numbers For Q3, Bolstering Power Systems

  October 26, 2020 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Historically speaking, the Power Systems division, now the Cognitive Systems division officially within IBM, has its worst period of sales in the first quarter of any year and its second worst 13-week revenue run in the third quarter of any year. And true to form, the third quarter of 2020 was not a great one for sales of Power iron, according to our model. That model is derived from IBM’s financial results and other data, and we update it every quarter when Big Blue reports to Wall Street.

  Thanks to the fact that the Power9 generation of machines is entering …

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