COMMON Europe Archives

FAX/400 And CICS For i Are Dead. What Will IBM Kill Next?

May 19, 2025 Alex Woodie

A number of IBM i products and functions were sunsetted and are no longer supported with IBM i 7.6, including some of the greenscreen Application Development ToolSet (ADTS) tools like Screen Design Aid (SDA) and Report Layout Utility (RLU), and more than two dozen others. This shouldn’t come as news, as IBM previously announced its intent. But what products and functions will IBM kill with the next release of IBM i? A cryptic post by IBM on its website has the community talking.

As part of the May 2024 Technology Refresh (TR) cycle for IBM i 7.4 and 7.5, Big …
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N2i Gains Traction Among IBM i Newbies

January 25, 2023 Alex Woodie

The YiPS made a big push to inject youth into the IBM i community over a decade ago. But when the youthful vigor ran low, members of the community regrouped, re-energized, and rebranded into a new group called New to IBM i (N2i). And judging from N2i’s recent success, the group has hit on something.

N2i has its roots in the YiPS, according to Marina Schwenk, who was a YiPS member back in the day and now is active in COMMON and the WMCPA. But there’s a crucial difference between N2i and YIPS, she says.

“The group that we’re …
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Loopback Hackathon Set for Next Week

January 11, 2023 Alex Woodie

The Loopback Hackathon organized by Common Europe last fall was such a hit that the organization is teaming up with COMMON North America for another hackathon next week. And like the previous hackathon, this one is also focused on using IBM i with Loopback, a popular Node.js framework for rapid development of REST APIs.

Mark Irish, an advisory software developer with the IBM lab in Rochester, Minnesota, was tapped to lead the first Loopback Hackathon, which took place in the Netherlands. Spearheaded by Common Next Gen, a youth-oriented group that’s part of Common Europe, the event was a big …
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Want To Influence IBM i’s Direction? Consider Joining An Advisory Council

December 12, 2022 Alex Woodie

Do you want to make your mark on the future of IBM i? If so, there may be a volunteer position available to you on one the two advisory councils run by COMMON and COMMON Europe, which play important roles in advising IBM what new features and technologies should be added to the platform.

Members of the COMMON Americas Advisory Council (CAAC) and the COMMON Europe Advisory Council (CEAC) play an important role shaping what new features and functionality are added to the IBM i platform. The two councils work closely with IBM to review and prioritize customer requirements submitted …
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Let’s Celebrate The Diamond Jubilee Of COMMON Europe

June 13, 2022 Timothy Prickett Morgan

Europe is a collection of countries that, over centuries of commerce, cultural exchange, and war have learned to come together and create a community of common interest. And so it is not a surprise at all that COMMON Europe, which is celebrating its 60^th year – it’s Diamond Jubilee – and that is something that very few organizations in the world ever attain.

And so, as the COMMON Europe Congress gets underway today in Alicante, Spain, we wanted to offer our congratulations and celebrate that longevity and continuity. (If you have a hankering to travel this week, you can …
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Get Virtually Packed For Common Europe Power Summer Camp

June 7, 2021 Timothy Prickett Morgan

The world is still not in the swing of things when it comes to business travel, trade shows, and conferences, and in many ways that is a good thing because events that were not physically accessible to many of us are now virtually accessible. Provided that you can deal with some time zone changes from time to time.

Such is the case with Common Europe’s Power Summer Camp 2021 Virtual Edition, which is running live on the Internet June 14, 15, and 17. No, that is not a typo, the event is skipping a day on June 16, perhaps 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 Reveals Power10 Rollout Plan, Begins Power11

November 23, 2020 Timothy Prickett Morgan

We have been following the development of the Power10 processor with great interest over the past few years, and have been trying to figure out precisely when – and how – Big Blue will put its future processor inside of Power Systems machines. At the Common Europe Online vCEC 2020 event last week, Steve Sibley, vice president and offering manager for the Cognitive Systems division at IBM, talked about IBM’s plan and put some rough dates on it.

When we talked to Sibley back in May, all he could tell us was that the impact of the coronavirus pandemic …
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