• 2021: An IBM i Year in Review, Part One

  December 13, 2021 Alex Woodie

  It’s mid-December. and since nothing much else is going on, let’s take a quick waltz through the IT Jungle archives to see what kind of year it was. It all started back in January, when…

  Our esteemed founding editor tried to convince IBM what is plainly obvious: That the IBM i installed base is “still its very largest enterprise computing customer base” (emphasis added). Yes, there are more Red Hat licenses, but when it comes to unique companies, IBM i, with around 120,000 customers around the world, is still tops. Will IBM do the hard work to find a (virtualized) …

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• IBM Shares COVID-19 Success Stories at POWERUp 2021

  October 11, 2021 Alex Woodie

  Hearing how your fellow IBM i customers use the platform is always fun, and it’s often informative, too. The IBM i product management team checked both of those boxes last week during the POWERUp 2021 conference, where they detailed how a handful of IBM i shops have found success with the platform, particularly during COVID-19.

  Take Magid, for example. The Illinois-based company is a manufacturer and distributor of personal protective equipment (PPE), such as masks and gloves. Demand for PPE spiked at the start of COVID-19, and has remained high throughout the pandemic. That demand caused the company to make …

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• Early Bird Special For Common Europe Congress Ends October 14

  October 11, 2021 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Copenhagen, which is known as “the happiest city in the world,” has its coronavirus situation under control and will be hosting the Common Europe Congress user group meeting from October 31 through November 3. Unlike the COMMON POWERUp 2021 event, which was supposed to be hosted in person in Virginia Beach, Virginia, as well as online, but has now been switched to a totally virtual event.

  Denmark has had its borders open since September 9, and vaccination rates are high and cases are very low. The reason, in part, has to do with high trust in the Danish government and …

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• COMMON Cancels In-Person POWERUp Again, Takes Conference Virtual

  September 22, 2021 Alex Woodie

  COMMON announced last week that it has cancelled the in-person portion of the POWERUp 2021 conference that was scheduled to take place in Virginia Beach due to the Delta variant that is causing coronavirus infections to surge. That’s the bad news. The good news is that the show will go on as a virtual conference October 4-7.

  This was the third time in two years that COMMON has been forced to cancel or delay its POWERUp conference. Like Lucy pulling the football away from Charlie Brown just as he’s about to kick it, SARS2 just won’t let COMMON actually hold …

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• Eradani Drives Simplification with API Tool Update

  September 15, 2021 Alex Woodie

  Eradani has always sought to simplify the application programming interface (API) enablement process as much as possible for its IBM i customers. And with the launch of Eradani Connect version 4.1, which features a new GUI, pre-built templates of APIs, and a catalog for the REST-style Web services created with the tool, the Northern California company is taking the simplification mantra to new levels.

  The world is chock full of Web services. Whether it’s real-time weather data, a shipping services, an ecommerce application, or a tax calculator, somebody somewhere is providing information over the Internet. These external APIs generally are …

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• Book A Date With Your DR Plan

  July 14, 2021 Alex Woodie

  Chances are, you’ve been through a lot in the past year, from a personal, a professional, and a public health perspective. Your company’s IT estate has probably gone through some changes, too. To keep your IBM i and open systems resilient and able to withstand misfortune, it’s a good idea to revisit your disaster recovery plan to make sure it reflects current reality.

  During COMMON’s recent NAViGATE event, IBM i DR expert Richard Dolewski provided a great description of why it’s so important to check your DR plan now. With so much turmoil caused by COVID, it’s simply too …

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• In Search Of Next Gen IBM i Apps

  June 28, 2021 Alex Woodie

  What will become of our RPG and COBOL applications? If IBM i chief architect Steve Will has his way, the core elements of them will evolve into what he calls “next gen” applications that can run in the cloud, if necessary.

  “We are not just focusing anymore on trying to help clients get past green screens to mobile interfaces or Web interfaces,” Will said during his recent COMMON NAViGATE session, titled IBM i PLUS Cloud is the Answer. “There are still clients and applications that need to get there. We understand that. But you can’t just stop there now. …

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• IBM i Business Bucks The COVID Trend, Will Says

  June 21, 2021 Alex Woodie

  The COVID pandemic has slammed American business and the American economy in many different ways, and it has taken its toll on server sales. But according to Steve Will, the IBM i chief architect, sales of IBM i systems have grown over the past three quarters. In response, IBM has enabled Rochester to go on a bit of a hiring spree to bolster the IBM i development team.

  “The IBM i business in 2021 is actually quite strong,” Will said during his presentation at the NAViGATE conference that COMMON held the week of May 24. “We had a very down …

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• Four Hundred Monitor, June 9

  June 9, 2021 Jenny Thomas

  Remember the days of summer camp? As a kid, summer camp memories might include swimming and hiking, roasting marshmallows, and even feeling a little homesick. Common Europe has reimagined summer camp with the IBM i professional in mind, and you don’t even have to go anywhere to join in on the fun. Common Europe’s Power Summer Camp 2021 Virtual Edition begins running live on the Internet on June 14, and it is free to attend. Topics will include the IBM i, AIX, and Linux operating systems as implemented on Power hardware. You can get more information and find out how …

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• A Million Miles Away From Machine Learning

  May 24, 2021 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  The spring COMMON NAViGATE conference has not yet started, the IBM Think 2021 conference has just ended and so has Google I/O 2021, and only a month ago we participated in Nvidia’s GPU Technical Conference 2021. A whole lotta things are rattling around in our brains, and we are still thinking about some of the things people have been saying about artificial intelligence, the instantiation of which based on machine learning techniques seems to work quite well but no one really knows, in the same way a COBOL or RPG program is absolutely deterministic, why it works.

  This is …

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