• And Then There Were Two: Big Blue Withdraws IBM i 7.4

  September 22, 2025 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  UPDATED: If you have a compelling reason to stay on IBM i 7.4 and need a license to it for a machine, or if IBM i 7.4 is the last release you can get your applications to without a major change in that code, then you have better shake a leg. Because IBM i 7.4 is only going to be sold for a few more months.

  In announcement letter AD25-0894, which was dated September 16, Big Blue said that it would stop selling the IBM i 7.4 operating system on April 30, 2026. A bunch of other related system …

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• Tandberg Bankruptcy Leaves A Hole In IBM Power Storage

  June 2, 2025 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  A problem has been brewing for back and archiving needs for entry and some midrange IBM i shops, and we did not know about it until the spit hit the fan last week. Had we known earlier, we could have warned you. And maybe Big Blue could have and should have warned you directly more immediately a few months ago instead of in the announcement that came out last week and that did not actually explain what was going on even a little bit.

  In announcement letter AD25-0836, dated May 27, IBM said that effective that day it was …

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• Plotting Out Power Systems And IBM i To 2040 And Beyond

  April 8, 2025 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  It may be hard to believe, but with the launch of IBM i 7.6 today, it has been 13,440 days since OS/400 V1R1 was announced on June 21, 1988, and Big Blue has delivered 27 distinct releases of the OS/400 and IBM i platform with dozens of Technology Refresh interim updates between releases in the IBM i 7.X series.

  It took nearly three years to go from OS/400 V1R1 to OS/400 V2R1, and there were no interim releases and Technology Refreshes were not going to be invented for a long time. With the V2 series, hardware and software releases in …

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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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• The Low Down On Service Extension For IBM i 7.X Releases

  March 25, 2024 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  In the wake of our discussion two weeks ago of the long-lived releases of IBM i and OS/400 and how they compare in terms of technical support and bug fix coverage to Linux and Windows Server, we got a bunch of questions about just when the service extension – what we call extended support like other operating system vendors – would end.

  We understood the very high price that customers pay for service extension – as brilliantly outlined in a piece by Steve Pitcher back in October 2023, which showed the high price that the cumulative cost stacks up …

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• Facing The Challenges Of Upgrading Old Systems With The Cloud

  September 18, 2023 Jason Hardy

  If you are one of the many IBM i shops that has always created its own applications and that has a long history of investing in the AS/400, iSeries, System i, and IBM i platforms over the past three and a half decades at reasonably regular intervals to keep the hardware and the systems software current, you have it relatively easy and we definitely want to talk to you about your move to the cloud and how we might help.

  But if you are one of the many OS/400 and IBM i shops that have, for myriad reasons, gotten stuck …

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• Infoview Launches New IBM i Integration Tool

  August 21, 2023 Alex Woodie

  Infoview Systems has launched a new integration product for IBM i customers. Called infoConnect Hub, the software is designed to expose IBM i data and applications to outside programs as a basic REST API, without any IBM i programming skills required, the company says.

  Integration continues to be a challenge for many enterprises, particularly those running “non-standard” platforms like IBM i. When there’s a need to access a program or fetch data from an IBM i server – such as checking a stock balance, delivery date, or fulfillment status – it often requires folks with IBM i skills to develop …

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• A Slew Of Power Systems Features Are Being Sunsetted

  July 17, 2023 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Big Blue has long since stopped selling Power8 machinery and has been winding down sales of Power9-based systems as its Power10 machines, which made their debut in late 2021 and early 2022, are ascending. So, it is natural that features for Power8 and Power9 machinery are being withdrawn. But even some features with the newer Power10 machines are also being withdrawn, in some cases because supplies are running out and in other cases because better features have been introduced.

  You have to keep up with these things so you can get what you need before IBM stops selling whatever that …

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• IBM i at 35: A Walk Down Memory Lane

  April 26, 2023 Alex Woodie

  You may have heard that the IBM midrange platform is turning 35 this year. IBM has a number of events planned in honor of that milestone, culminating with a big birthday bash on June 21. IBM execs gave us a sneak peak of the festivities to come at this week’s POWERUp show in Denver, as well as a technical look back at exactly how we got here.

  The day the AS/400 launched in 1988 was notable for several reasons. IBM i CTO Steve Will, who was just starting his distinguished engineering career at IBM, recalls lots of excitement in the …

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