• Getting A Handle On What GenAI Might Cost

  August 21, 2024 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Because of my other day job at The Next Platform, I can give you a pretty good idea about what it costs to train an AI model or run inference against it once it is trained. But I have seen very little data that tries to give any of a sense of what it costs to add generative AI functionality to applications.

  But interestingly, Gartner analysts embedded some such data in a report about how it expected many GenAI projects to be abandoned by the end of 2025 after their proofs of concept fail. That so many PoCs will …

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• Some Thoughts On Big Blue’s GenAI Strategy For IBM i

  August 12, 2024 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  In a world that has gone half mad with generative AI, it is refreshing to see the people who control the IBM i platform being skeptical, hopeful, and practical about how the technology might be used to help the companies who choose Power Systems running IBM i as the platform for their mission critical applications.

  IBM Rochester has always been practical and often innovative when it comes to adopting hardware and software technologies, so the strategy that IBM i chief technology officer Steve Will laid out in a recent IBM i & AI – Strategy & Update as part of …

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• IBM Launches AI-Powered Security Assistant

  August 7, 2024 Alex Woodie

  IBM this week launched a new AI-based security tool that’s designed to help security professionals who are deluged by data. Dubbed the IBM Consulting Cybersecurity Assistant, the new offering is based on IBM’s watsonx technology and is available (as the name would suggest) to IBM consulting clients.

  Security professionals are constantly bombarded with alerts to the point where they are overloaded. A recent survey by CybSafe found that more than 25 percent of security professionals say they’re often or always feeling overwhelmed with information, while another 46 percent say they occasionally feel that way. A 2021 survey by Trend Micro …

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• Power Systems Continues Its Slight Upward Trend

  August 5, 2024 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  There is an old saying: No news is good news, and with a slew of medical issues in our family right now, we get that. But what is also true is that good news is good news, and when it comes to the Power Systems business this is – happily surprisingly ­– precisely what is happening.

  The overall IBM business is doing alright as well, which is also good for Big Blue and for the customers that depend upon its systems to do their mission critical computing.

  In the quarter ended in June, Big Blue’s sales were up a smidgen, …

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• Profound Brings GenAI Tech To IBM i Apps with Profound AI

  June 24, 2024 Alex Woodie

  For more than 20 years, Profound Logic has been at the cutting edge of bringing the latest Web, mobile, and API technology to IBM i shops. With the launch of Profound AI, it’s now helping IBM i shops adopt the latest in user interface tech: natural language and generative AI.

  GenAI has taken the world by storm since OpenAI launched ChatGPT in late 2022. Since then, nearly every large enterprise has explored the potential for using large language models (LLMs) to develop a range of GenAI products, including chatbots, autonomous agents, question-and-answering systems, and knowledge management apps.

  Despite the potential …

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• IBM Developing AI Coding Assistant for IBM i

  May 22, 2024 Alex Woodie

  During his keynote presentation at the POWERUp 2024 conference Monday, IBM i CTO Steve Will announced that IBM is actively exploring ways to incorporate generative AI into the IBM i platform. The most promising of three individual but related projects is a plan to build a large language model (LLM)-powered coding assistant for IBM i that will initially provide three functions to support RPG development, with more expected in the future.

  The genesis of the coding assisting project for RPG, which doesn’t have a name yet, can be traced to last year’s launch of watsonx Code Assistant for Z, which …

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• The Time Is Now To Get A GenAI Strategy

  March 18, 2024 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  I was born a little less than a year after IBM launched its venerable System/360 mainframe platform, arguably the first information technology platform ever created and sold at scale. I graduated from college six months after the AS/400 was launched and was the founding editor of this newsletter you are now reading a little more than a year after Silverlake came to market and showed what a real platform could look like.

  I was present during the Unix revolution, the client/server revolution, the commercial Internet revolution, and the big data revolutions, and I was absolutely at the forefront of commercial …

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• IBM i Shops Are Still Getting Their Generative AI Acts Together

  February 5, 2024 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  One of the great things about participating in the annual IBM i Marketplace Survey put together by Fortra – and one of the reasons why our beloved colleague Dan Burger helped HelpSystems create the survey a decade ago – was that we get to have input into how the survey is created and how it evolves over time.

  During the survey, our host Tom Huntington, executive vice president of technical solutions at Fortra, does an instant poll for attendees, and rather than ask the same question as last year, which was about where people get their information about the IBM …

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• Top Priorities in 2024: Security and AI

  January 17, 2024 Alex Woodie

  Two sometimes opposing forces will be at play in 2024: the threat of cybersecurity breaches on the one hand and the promise of tech disruption thanks to AI on the other. Tech leaders, including IBM i professionals, who chart a course through these obstacles will be well-positioned to help their companies and their careers in the years to come.

  First, let’s cover security. It’s no secret that cybercriminals have been ramping up their game over the past few years. Since the Covid-19 pandemic gave online activity a turbo-boost four years ago, cybercriminals have been having a field day with people’s …

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• 2023: An IBM i Year in Review

  December 13, 2023 Alex Woodie

  With another year nearly in the books, it’s time to take a stroll through the IT Jungle archives and reconsider some of the 728 stories we published in 2023. Here’s a look back at the biggest IBM i news stories of 2023.

  January

  The top concern of IBM i professionals, according to Fortra’s annual IBM i Marketplace Study, was once again security, a position it has held for six straight years. The latest crop of IBM Champions unveiled in January featured about 90 members from the IBM i community, out of a total of 839 for the year. Is …

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