• 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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• It Is Time To Tell Us What You Are Thinking And Doing

  October 6, 2025 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  It is the beginning of fall, or autumn if you are in Europe, and you know what that means. No, it is not the deciduous woods turning to the colors of fire. Not it is not football (or soccer for that matter), or harvest time. But it is the time when Fortra opens up its annual IBM i Marketplace Survey, which has been running for more than a decade now.

  The annual survey, which is in its 13^th year, opened on September 15. You can give back to the IBM i community and help nudge IBM and ISVs in …

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• NAViGATE, inPower 2025 On Tap for September 2025

  September 15, 2025 Alex Woodie

  As the summer turns to fall, IBM i professionals will be turning out to a pair of events being hosted in the Midwest, including Infor’s imPower 2025 conference in Wisconsin, and COMMON’s NAViGATE conference taking place in Pennsylvania. Both shows are expected to draw hundreds of participants.

  NAViGATE 2025 takes place this week in Pittsburgh. COMMON is hosting about 110 sessions on IBM i topics across the three-day event, including sessions on application development, security, high availability, and administering the system.

  Tim Rowe, an IBM architect for application development, and Julia Yan, the lead developer of Navigator for i, will …

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• BRMS Isn’t The Only Backup Product With A Security Problem

  July 21, 2025 Alex Woodie

  IBM last month patched a serious security flaw in BRMS, the built-in backup and recovery facility that it ships with the IBM i operating system. The flaw is the latest in a series of security flaws uncovered in backup tools, which cyber criminals appear to be now targeting.

  If you’re a regular reader of Doug Bidwell’s IBM i PTF Guide – and really, if you are responsible for managing an IBM i environment, you should be reading it regularly – then you already knew about the security flaw in BRMS. Bidwell covered the flaw and the associated emergency PTF for …

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• Vendors Fill In The Gaps With IBM’s New MFA Solution

  July 14, 2025 Alex Woodie

  The new multi-factor authentication (MFA) capability that IBM has built into the IBM i operating system is a real gamechanger in terms of securing the system and preventing unauthorized access to applications and data. However, it lacks some key capabilities that some customers are looking for in an MFA solution, which third-party vendors are eager to fill.

  The native MFA function that Big Blue delivered with IBM i 7.6 is being praised almost universally throughout the IBM i community as a massive security improvement. The MFA functionality, which uses randomly generated time-based one-time passwords (TOTP), is built directly into …

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• IBM i Shops “Attacking” Security Concerns, Study Shows

  July 8, 2025 Alex Woodie

  Faced with ever-growing security concerns, IBM i shops are “attacking” the problem and taking real steps to improve their security posture, Fortra says in its latest State of IBM i Security study. It is the second straight year that Fortra has noticed an improvement in IBM i shops’ approach to security. However, there are still areas that require improvement.

  Fortra and its predecessors (HelpSystems, PowerTech) have been running the annual State of Security study for 22 years, providing a unique glimpse into the security configurations of IBM i customers that is unmatched in the industry.

  Every year, a new group …

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• 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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• What The Marketplace Study Says About IBM i Migrations And Outlook

  March 10, 2025 Alex Woodie

  One of the values that Fortra’s annual IBM i Marketplace Survey brings to the table is to function as a forward-looking indicator. If something is stirring in the IBM i installed base – say, that a large chunk is looking to mosey off the platform – then it likely will appear in the data. So when we analyze the data from the 2025 report, that’s something worth looking for.

  The good news from the 2025 IBM i Marketplace Survey results is that there’s nothing to indicate any mass migrations are under way. Companies will always come and go on IBM …

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• State Of The Power Systems Base 2025: The Systems

  February 17, 2025 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  In last week’s issue, we talked about the upgrade cycle for the IBM i operating systems over more than a decade based on the annual IBM i Marketplace Survey done by Fortra and pretty heavily massaged by us to reflect what we think is closer to reality for the IBM i market at large.

  No matter if you look at the raw data from the survey or the more elaborate model we have built derived from the past eleven surveys, one thing is clear: There is a regular pattern for Power Systems upgrades among OS/400, i5/OS, and IBM i shops …

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• State Of The Power Systems Base 2025: The Operating Systems

  February 10, 2025 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  What is more important: Keeping a server platform current or keeping its operating system current?

  That is a trick question, and it is tricky in two ways. First, you should keep both hardware and software current, or more precisely, keep both as current as the applications, the budget, and good sense permits. A server older than five years is going to start having component failure (usually with the disk drives and fans), and one that is 10years old has the chance of a much more catastrophic failure. However, with a machine that is five to ten years old, you can …

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