• Now Is Your Chance To Ask IBM i CTO Steve Will Some Questions

  July 18, 2022 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  You have always wanted to pick the brains of Steve Will, the long-time IBM i chief architect and now chief technology officer and distinguished engineer for IBM i. Will is the first distinguished engineer within the IBM i organization and also its first CTO, and if there is something technical you have on your mind, there is nothing quite like starting at the top.

  Will is going to be one of the several speakers taking part in a live webcast hosted by Able One, a gold-level IBM i partner based in Kitchener, Ontario, that has been an IBM …

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• Exploring Security Applications for IBM i OLAP

  July 13, 2022 Alex Woodie

  The IBM i platform is typically thought of as a transactional server, and it does that job very well. But it also has solid analytical capabilities, thanks in large part to new OLAP features added many years ago with IBM i 7.3. Now the platform’s database guru, Scott Forstie, is looking for ways to promote greater use of these OLAP capabilities, and security is emerging as a top application.

  Sometimes it takes a while to figure out what a good thing you have. This appears to be the case with IBM i 7.3, which launched way back in 2016 and …

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• More IBM i Security Flaws Revealed

  July 13, 2022 Alex Woodie

  The summer slowdown might have started in your particular business, but things are just getting warmed up IBM security researchers, who disclosed a series of new vulnerabilities across IBM i products over the past couple of weeks, including IBM i Merlin, WAS Liberty, OpenSSL, the Digital Certificate Manager, and Zlib.

  On June 27, IBM disclosed that the collection of open source and proprietary tools and technology it’s brought together as IBM i Modernization Engine for Lifecycle Integration (Merlin) suffers from no fewer than 16 separate security flaws.

  Among the most series of these flaws is a CVE-2022-22965, a data binding …

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• The Power10 Machines That Will Take IBM i To 2025

  July 12, 2022 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  IBM i shops that have been waiting for an upgrade path that will take them to the other half of this decade do not have to wait any longer. Finally, after a change of foundry (to Samsung) and process technology (from 10 nanometers down to 7 nanometers) as well as a new implementation of the Power instruction set packed with all kinds of vector and matrix math goodies that are perfect for embedding AI into commercial applications, Big Blue is ready to start shipping the entry and midrange Power Systems machines based on the Power10 processor.

  We made it, despite …

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• Merlin Development Framework Now Supports IBM i 7.3

  July 12, 2022 Alex Woodie

  Big Blue has decided to support IBM i version 7.3 with Merlin, the new application development framework that was introduced in May as part of the IBM i 7.5 launch. The decision should help widen the potential user base for Merlin, even while discouraging operating system upgrades.

  Merlin is a new software package from IBM designed to enable IBM i developers to create new ILE programs from scratch or to modernize existing ones. The software, which is officially called Modernization Engine for Lifecycle Integration, is based on a mix of open source and proprietary tools from IBM, Red Hat, …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 24, Number 23

  June 8, 2022 Doug Bidwell

  Welcome to this week’s edition of the IBM i PTF Guide. We start out with a correction to the Technology Refresh tab in the spreadsheet, where the “LIC Resave” values that were for 7.4 TR6 and 7.3 TR12 were based on an IBM site that was itself incorrect. That site has since been corrected, and now we have corrected the information in the sheet. Many thanks to Jeff at IBM for catching this!

  And now, a bevy of Security Bulletins – four different vulnerabilities that affect the IBM i platform, to be specific.

  First, we have Security Bulletin: IBM …

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• More IBM i Merlin Details Emerge at POWERUp

  June 1, 2022 Alex Woodie

  We are getting a more complete picture of IBM i Merlin, the DevOps offering that IBM introduced last month with the launch of IBM i 7.5. Among the most interesting revelations at COMMON’s annual POWERUp conference last week is that Merlin will be a vehicle for delivering a range of functionality to the platform in the future, not necessarily limited to app dev.

  IBM i Modernization Engine for Lifecycle Integration, or Merlin, is a new offering from IBM. The software, as it exists in its first incarnation, enables users to develop IBM i application in ILE languages through an …

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• Kill Three Cloud Scenario Birds With One StorSafe Stone

  June 1, 2022 Larry Bolhuis

  It is a rare event when you can kill two birds with one stone. But thanks to a new partnership between IBM and FalconStor Software, you may have the opportunity to take down three with one stone. And it’s an opportunity I know well since I collaborated with the FalconStor and IBM teams to bring it forward.

  Last month, IBM and FalconStor announced a strategic partnership to make the IBM i platform a better player in the hybrid cloud world that I believe will increasingly be a reality for IBM i users who rely on the platform to support their …

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• LUG Looks to Grow Membership

  June 1, 2022 Alex Woodie

  If you work at a large IBM i shop and are interested in having more of a say in the direction of the platform, then you might be interested in joining the influential Large User Group (LUG). And as luck would have it, the group, which is meeting in Rochester next week for the first time in three years, has several openings in its rolls and is looking for new members.

  LUG got its start back in 1994, when IT executives from six big AS/400 shops got together at a COMMON conference and realized they had a common set of …

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• POWERUp Brings IBM i Base Back Together in the Big Easy

  May 25, 2022 Alex Woodie

  After two years of lockdowns and Zoom calls, IBM i professionals were joyful to be face to face with fellow users this week at the POWERUp conference in New Orleans. The celebration lasted all week, and spilled over onto Bourbon Street at times, but that didn’t get in the way of the primary mission: Getting educated on IBM i. And with the latest enhancements, there was a lot to learn.

  For many POWERUp 2022 attendees and ISVs, COMMON’s annual conference is the first physical event they’ve attended since the pandemic started back in March 2020. With the easing of …

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