• Raz-Lee Debuts Anti-Ransomware For IBM i

  June 18, 2018 Alex Woodie

  Despite its reputation as a secure digital fortress for back office automation, the IBM i server is subject to all manner of modern security threats. That includes ransomware, which can work its way onto mapped IFS drives and render business documents stored on the IBM i server useless. Raz-Lee Security recently launched a new solution aimed at combatting the spread of ransomware on IBM i.

  Today’s business environment rewards companies that embrace openness. Companies are encouraged to open up their mainframes and IBM i servers and leverage the data and business processes they contain using APIs, microservices, and modern user …

  Read more

• Google Close to Launching IBM i Cloud Service, Will Says

  June 4, 2018 Alex Woodie

  One of the laments of Power chip types everywhere is the lack of a public cloud service for Power applications. While Linux and Windows folks can run their X86 workloads on multiple public clouds, the opportunities for hosting IBM i, AIX, or Power Linux workloads are limited to so-called private clouds. But according to IBM i chief architect Steve Will, that could soon be changing.

  While neither IBM nor Google have made any official announcements about Google running IBM i in its public cloud, Will talked openly about the relationship between the two tech giants at COMMON‘s PowerUp conference …

  Read more

• Fresche Takes $60 Million To Fuel Growth, Consolidate Market

  June 4, 2018 Alex Woodie

  Fresche Solutions is making big moves, and readying itself to make even bigger ones. With $60 million in the bank – and a line of eager equity firms willing to invest millions more – the IBM i software and services firm is poised to significantly expand operations in a bid to capture what executives foresee as a loosening of budgets and uptick in demand around application modernization.

  Fresche Solutions had just announced the $60 million financing round at the COMMON PowerUp conference two weeks ago, and its CFO was itching to get out on the expo floor. That’s where the …

  Read more

• IBM i Finds A Youthful Swagger Down In Texas

  May 23, 2018 Alex Woodie

  The IBM i platform and ecosystem may not be what they once were. Thirty years of relentless OLTP processing will do that to you. But if COMMON’s POWERUp 18 conference this week in San Antonio is any indication, the box itself and the ecosystem it supports are far from dead.

  Signs of life in IBM i-land were evident everywhere at the Marriott Rivercenter, the hotel where about 1,000 IBM i professionals, vendors, and IBMers spent the past four days holed up for COMMON‘s annual conference, which was renamed POWERUp.

  Here are some of the highlights of the show, which …

  Read more

• Syncsort Talks Rebranding, IBM i Product Strategy

  May 23, 2018 Alex Woodie

  Think you know Syncsort? Who the company is and what it does? Well, you might want to take a fresh peek, because the company that acquired Vision Solutions and a handful of other IBM i software firms is on the move. In fact, it used the COMMON POWERUp 18 conference in San Antonio this week to begin rolling out a long-awaited company rebranding and major product refresh – including its new Fusion unification strategy and several new IBM i products.

  First of all, the company will continue to be known as Syncsort. The executives leading the Pearl River, New …

  Read more

• Massiello Named First Lifetime Champion for Power

  May 23, 2018 Alex Woodie

  Pete Massiello has been a mainstay of the IBM i community for decades. He’s the president of iTech Solutions, a former president at COMMON, a respected technical authority on the platform, an in-demand speaker, and part of the inaugural group of IBM Champions for Power Systems in 2011. Now he can add one more title to his resume: Lifetime Champion for Power Systems.

  IBM this month announced that Massiello is the first Lifetime Champion for Power, an event for which he was not prepared. “It was a surprise to me,” he said, before quickly adding “It’s a huge honor, an …

  Read more

• Four Hundred Monitor, May 23

  May 23, 2018 Dan Burger

  COMMON stole the spotlight this week with its POWERUp 18 event in Austin, Texas. IT Jungle’s own Alex Woodie was our boots on the ground at the show, giving us the inside scoop from the opening session and what appears to be a bright future for IBM i and the Power business. And we would be remiss if we didn’t mention the continued celebrations of the 30th anniversary of our beloved platform. If you haven’t been reading The Four Hundred this week, you have been missing out. After you catch up here, take a look below at what’s happening …

  Read more

• Past And Future Collide At PowerUp 18

  May 21, 2018 Alex Woodie

  COMMON kicked off its first inaugural PowerUp conference Sunday in San Antonio, Texas, where an estimated 1,000 attendees are gathered to learn about the Power Systems platform and share their knowledge with other users. The IBM i server’s 30 years of reliable service was a big topic of discussion, but IBM executives Steve Sibley and Stefanie Chiras were determined to talk about Power’s AI future.

  Any platform that lives to be 30 years old in this day and age is doing something right. While today’s IBM i server is not the same beast as the first AS/400 that came out …

  Read more

• Big Blue Gives IBM i Shops A Special 30th Birthday Bash Box

  May 21, 2018 Dan Burger

  Big Blue is in the middle of celebrating three decades of the IBM i platform, and the company has unveiled a special birthday box that commemorates the occasion. It’s essentially a Solutions Edition package with some extra bells and whistles. For those unfamiliar with the Solutions Editions, they are pre-configured systems with a choice of IBM and ISV software discounts applied. Those discounts would be unavailable when buying the systems or the software individually.

  The IBM i 30th Edition offering is based on IBM i Solution Edition Power9 Model S914, a P05 tier box, with four cores. All of the …

  Read more

• COMMON Changes Things Up With PowerUp 2018

  April 9, 2018 Alex Woodie

  We are six weeks away from the first inaugural PowerUp conference, the new name that COMMON has given to its annual meeting and exposition. While the new name has drawn some feedback, the changes that COMMON is making to the conference itself are expected to be the big head turners next month in San Antonio. We check in with the user group’s president, Justin Porter, for the good news.

  Let’s start with PowerUp, a name that not only reflects COMMON‘s affiliation with IBM and its Power Systems servers, but also reflects the notion of “up skilling,” the activity most …

  Read more

Previous Articles