• Big Blue Is Right On Schedule With Fall 2026 IBM i Tech Refreshes

  November 2, 2026 Alex Woodie

  After delaying the spring Technology Refreshes for three months earlier this year, IBM is back on track with the fall TRs. IBM i shops will find a raft of new capabilities in the newly announced IBM i 7.6 TR3 and 7.5 TR9, including new services for tracking security patches, performance improvements for networking and storage, and sundry other improvements up and down and across the stack.

  Big Blue announced IBM i 7.6 TR3 and IBM i 7.5 TR9 on October 27, and plans to deliver the new capabilities and updates on November 20, although some components of the announcement will …

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• Code For i Continues To Grow. Here Is What’s New

  September 21, 2026 Alex Woodie

  Code for i has been the hottest open source project in the IBM i community for several years, and that popularity is not dropping. In fact, the community behind the red hot project continues to improve the VS Code-based development environment, including new functionality that we can expect to see released in the future.

  Code for i is a VS Code plug-in originally created by Liam Allan in 2021 to make Web-based development possible for ILE developers on IBM i. The project has exploded in popularity over the past five years, with nearly 93,000 installs recorded on the Microsoft Marketplace …

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• Big Blue Finally Unveils First IBM i Tech Refreshes Of 2026

  July 20, 2026 Alex Woodie

  Well, that took a little longer than usual. Last week, IBM finally made its first IBM i Technology Refresh announcements of 2026, formally unveiling the group of updates that collectively will make up IBM i 7.6 TR2 and 7.5 TR8. With the fall TR ostensibly just three months away, the good news with the two new TRs is that the general availability date is this Friday.

  Since IBM moved to the TR cycle back in 2010, it has traditionally given the IBM i community two big updates per year, one in the spring (normally April) and one in the …

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• PTC Adds Support For VS Code With Implementer 12.7

  June 15, 2026 Alex Woodie

  IBM i shops that rely on PTC’s Implementer software to manage their RPG development will soon be able to use the tool within the VS Code development environment. The upcoming release of Implementer 12.7 will introduce several other important features as PTC begins the process of modernizing the tool.

  Implementer is a well-established change management system targeting the IBM i environment. The software traces its roots to 1987, when four Pansophic (creators of the PRMS ERP system now owned by Infor) employees founded Silvon Software in Chicago. One of their first products was a tool to manage source code …

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• After A Few Short Years, VS Code Passes Rational Developer for i

  February 23, 2026 Alex Woodie

  It has finally happened: Visual Studio Code has passed Rational Developer for i in usage, according to the 2026 version of Fortra’s IBM i Marketplace Survey. The survey also shows lower adoption of greenscreen ADTS and increased use of DevOps tools, demonstrating some positive trends in IBM i application development.

  It’s been barely two years since Fortra started asking IBM i customers about their use of Visual Studio Code, the free, Web-based integrated development environment (IDE) originally developed by Microsoft and set free as an open source project in November 2015. The 2024 survey (which was conducted in late 2023) …

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• 2025: An IBM i Year In Review

  January 12, 2026 Alex Woodie

  The calendar has flipped over into the new year, bringing with it hope that the next twelve months will unfold in a positive way. It’s also a good time to reflect on what 2025 brought to the IBM i community, and to remember the big news events that occurred in our little sector of the IT market.

  January

  IBM hired a new vice president of product management for the Power Systems business. Bargav Balakrishnan was promoted to the position, which was previously held by Steve Sibley. Balakrishnan, who has a master’s degree in electrical engineering from the University of Michigan, …

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• Learning And Laughing With Scott Forstie And Tim Rowe

  December 8, 2025 Alex Woodie

  In the darkest days of the 2020 pandemic, with COVID lockdowns in full force, IBM i business architects Tim Rowe and Scott Forstie decided to try something new: start a video blog. Dubbed iSee, the short videos blend serious technical content around ACS and SQL services with goofy puns and silly drawings. Fast forward to fall 2025, and iSee is going strong, as the pair recently aired their 100th iSee episode.

  “Scott and I have been thinking about some fun things that we want to talk about to help you in your every day job,” Rowe said in the very …

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• IBM Just Killed Merlin. Here’s Why

  October 20, 2025 Alex Woodie

  The writing had been on the wall for some time, and IBM finally made it official as part of the Technology Refresh for IBM i on October 7. That was when Big Blue announced the immediate withdrawal from marketing and service for its Modernization Engine for Lifecycle Integration product, commonly called Merlin. It will likely go down in IBM i history as a well-intentioned product that got some things right, but which ultimately could not overcome its flaws.

  The introduction of Merlin back in May 2022 represented a sizable shift in IBM’s approach to application development on IBM i. Prior …

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• You Can Now Get IBM Tech Support For VS Code For i

  August 11, 2025 Alex Woodie

  IBM i shops that were on the fence about migrating from Rational Developer for i and adopting VS Code for RPG and COBOL development just received one big reason why they should bite the bullet and make the move: the launch of a new technical support package for Code for i from IBM.

  Visual Studio Code is currently the most popular integrated development environment (IDE) on planet Earth, according to multiple measures, such as the Stack Overflow’s 2025 Developer Survey, which found Microsoft VS Code was used by 76 percent of all respondents, more than twice the usage of …

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• Liam Allan Shares What’s Coming Next With Code For IBM i

  June 23, 2025 Alex Woodie

  The rise of Code for IBM i arguably is the best IBM i technology story of the past few years. The VS Code development environment came out of nowhere to challenge Rational Developer for i as the pre-eminent developer tool on the platform. And according to Liam Allan, who started this whole thing, Code for i is only going to get better in the months and years to come.

  There is clear and unmistakable momentum behind VS Code and Code for IBM i, the VS Code plug-in that Liam Allan created back in 2021 while working at Seiden Group …

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