• Critical Security Vulnerability In PowerVM Hypervisor

  May 22, 2023 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  IBM’s Product Security Incident Response Team (PSIRT) put out a notice on Wednesday, May 17, to inform the Power Systems installed base that there is a very serious security vulnerability in the PowerVM hypervisor. You can see the PSIRT notice at this link and the Security Bulletin: This Power System firmware update is being released to address CVE 2023-30438 at this link. This has a CVSS base score of 9.3, which means it is critical.

  We very rarely see any security vulnerabilities being reported for the PowerVM hypervisor or for the IBM i operating system itself, for that matter, …

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• Thoroughly Modern: Unlocking the Full Potential Of Your IBM i Applications

  May 15, 2023 Greg Patterson

  IBM i is the backbone of mission critical applications for over 120,000 customers worldwide in every conceivable industry and company size, particularly with companies ranging from $50 million to $1 billion in annual revenues and specializing in manufacturing, distribution, financial services, and healthcare. In other words, IBM i supports a significant share of the global economy.

  Although the IBM i platform is very productive, there are many things we can do to modernize our applications and provide more value to the business. But this is easier said than done. Some of the biggest challenges that that we face relate to …

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• The IBM i OS Base Is Older Than We Think, But Moving Ahead

  March 6, 2023 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Hardware upgrades are costly in terms of money and while it is always exciting to get a new system with that “new computer smell” – and you know what we are talking about – at least IBM i operating system and systems software upgrades don’t carry such a high price – provided you are on Software Maintenance and you do proper testing on your software before you make a jump to a new release.

  The other great thing about IBM i systems software is that any given release not only runs on the current new Power Systems hardware at the …

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• The Power Systems Base Is A Little Less Rusty

  February 27, 2023 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Another three years, and another upgrade cycle that can bring about the modernizing of the Power Systems iron that supports the IBM i customer base. Or, more precisely, another four distinct upgrade cycles that customers are on as they move off legacy iron to something more current than what they have.

  What we mean by this is that some customers are stuck on older releases because they are cheapskates by necessity or they have applications that can only run on older releases like OS/400 V5R3, i5/OS 5.4, or IBM i 6.1. Others are stuck on IBM i 7.1. Or IBM …

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• The IBM i Marketplace Survey Is Open For You

  October 5, 2022 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  How many times a day do people tell you what you know matters? Well, it does, and I am telling you. But that knowledge of your IBM i environment is not doing anyone any good, stuck inside of your noggin. To get a realistic sense of what is actually going on out there in IBM i Land, we need you to pipe up.

  The 9^th annual IBM i Marketplace Survey that HelpSystems does every fall is open, and will be for a few more weeks. But we don’t want you to wait until the last minute to participate. Please …

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• We Need Some Insight From You

  October 3, 2022 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  What you are doing – and what you are not doing – with you IBM i platform is important to us. And that is why we are asking you to take the 9^th annual IBM i Marketplace Survey that HelpSystems does every fall.

  This survey, which was conceived of by the late Dan Burger of IT Jungle and Tom Huntington of HelpSystems, was started nine years ago because we were all frustrated by the lack of insight about the IBM i base.

  The data that this survey gathers is invaluable, and long-time readers of The Four Hundred know full …

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• Take A Minute, And Take The IBM i Marketplace Survey

  September 28, 2022 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Hey, you. Yeah, we mean you. You have something we need.

  It’s information. You know, the currency of the modern era. Without it, we can’t figure out where you are and where you are going, and that means we can’t figure out where the IBM i base is and where it might be going. The 9^th annual IBM i Marketplace Survey sponsored by HelpSystems every fall is open, and we need you to take a few moments right now to take the survey and tell us about your IBM i shop.

  This survey, which was conceived of by …

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• It’s Time To Take The IBM i Marketplace Survey

  September 26, 2022 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  The 9^th annual IBM i Marketplace Survey that HelpSystems does every fall is open, and if we hope to get some insight into what is going on in the base and report back on it in January 2023, we need you to take a few moments right now to take the survey and tell us about your IBM i shop.

  This survey, which was conceived of by the late Dan Burger of IT Jungle and Tom Huntington of HelpSystems, was started nine years ago because we were all frustrated by the lack of insight about the IBM i base. …

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• IBM i Licensing, Part 1: Operating System Subscriptions

  June 6, 2022 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Every vendor that sells systems and/or the systems software that runs atop that machinery has had to cope with myriad transitions in product packaging and pricing with the establishment of the cloud. The transitions are difficult for both companies and their customers, but in the long run, pricing will be more flexible and equitable – and far more predictable for both vendors and users alike.

  Big Blue has offered several licensing models over the years for the OS/400, i5/OS, and IBM i platforms. In the early years, every piece of software had a perpetual license tied to a machine, usually …

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• The State Of The IBM i Base 2022: Third Party Software Conundrum

  April 11, 2022 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Aside from death, most problems are not intractable. But people surely can be, and sometimes are. But luckily not often, and the thing about people is that, generally speaking, they can be reasonable when they are reasoned with. It is with all of this in mind that we come to the next in the State of IBM i Base stories for 2022, where we want to talk about the software trap that the remaining OS/400, i5/OS, and some IBM i shops have gotten themselves into and how we might help them get out of it to the mutual benefit of …

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