• 2024: An IBM i Year In Review

  December 4, 2024 Alex Woodie

  It’s hard to believe that yet another year is coming to a close. As 2024 rolls to its merciful end, it’s time for us to take stock of the major events and announcements that impacted the IBM i community.

  January

  News broke in late January that revenue in IBM’s Power Systems business grew for the second year in a row in 2023. TPM’s model showed $1.53 billion in external Power Systems sales for the year, which was a hair above the 2022 figure, which was a hair above the 2021 figure. It’s not 2010-era numbers, when the figure was north …

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• IBM Introduces Mapepire, The New Db2 For i Client

  September 9, 2024 Alex Woodie

  IBM has released a new client for connecting applications to the Db2 for i database. Dubbed Mapepire, the open source client is designed to be faster, lighter weight, and easier for developers to work with compared to existing ODBC and JDBC database clients, especially in cloud environments.

  Building an application-side database client using existing Db2 for i’s database drivers, such as ODBC and JDBC (included in the JTOpen Java toolbox for IBM i) typically entails cramming a lot of overhead into the client component, says Liam Allan, who helps develop new open source development tooling at IBM.

  “For example, jtopen …

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• Future-Proof Your Data Strategy With LANSA BI

  July 22, 2024 Stephen Strake

  Last October, with no warning at all, IBM suddenly pulled the plug on its Db2 Web Query business intelligence tool for the IBM i platform. This left a lot of customers in the lurch, since Db2 Web Query is based on but very different from the WebFOCUS business intelligence tool from Information Builders.

  IBM and Information Builders, we later learned, could not come to terms on how to re-license the WebFOCUS engine at the heart of Db2 Web Query, and thus far, IBM has not provided an alternative BI platform or a migration tool for any third-party applications.

  The upshot …

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• Rocket Buys Data Integration Provider B.O.S.

  September 18, 2023 Alex Woodie

  Rocket Software has announced the acquisition of B.O.S., a German provider of data integration software. While the software company targets primarily the mainframe with its data integration solutions, Rocket says it’s considering broadening support to IBM i.

  B.O.S. was founded more than 30 years ago to develop data integration solutions that connect the IBM mainframe to other systems. It boasts more than 1,200 installations in 25 countries, including Fortune 50 firms as well as government organizations.

  The company’s flagship product, called tcVision, helps customers move data from their mainframe sources, such as Db2, IMS, VSAM files, ADABAS, and CA DATACOM, …

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• Data Is Streaming Into The Cloud, Including From IBM i

  November 14, 2022 Alex Woodie

  We are in the midst of a vast migration of data into public clouds, as companies seek to leverage technological innovation occurring in the cloud for competitive advantage. While there are no IBM i runtimes in the public cloud yet, IBM i shops are still getting value by moving their valuable Db2 for i data into the cloud, often using streaming technologies and tools like Apache Kafka and Apache Camel, as well as an updated ETL offering from IBM.

  It is tough to understate the magnitude of the transition to the public cloud is having on the $4 trillion IT …

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• Kyndryl Wants to Connect Your IBM i to Microsoft Azure

  October 12, 2022 Alex Woodie

  Kyndryl, the former IBM division known as Global Technology Services (GTS), last week unveiled an expanded partnership with Microsoft that will see it helping IBM i and System z customers integrate their applications and data with Microsoft Azure, specifically its low-code, no-code development platform called Power.

  Kyndryl’s alliance with Microsoft will make it easier for companies to leverage the valuable data and business logic contained in their midrange and mainframe assets as they develop new applications in the Microsoft Power Platform, which is a low-code, no-code development environment.

  “Basically, it provides a low-code, no-code environment in Azure for programmers,” …

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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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• Log4j Hits Heritage Version of Navigator for i – No Patch Coming

  January 12, 2022 Alex Woodie

  IBM i shops running the old version of the Navigator for i client should be aware that the software is vulnerable to the Log4j security vulnerability, and there will be no patch to fix it, IBM says in a new security bulletin. There will, however, be fixes coming to other vulnerable components, including IWS, IAS, and IBM i Access Client Solutions (ACS), IBM says.

  Just before we hit the holiday break, the extremely severe Apache Log4j security vulnerability was disclosed to the world, resulting in a frantic effort to patch servers, desktops, refrigerators – just about anything with a …

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• Controlling IBM i Access With Exit Points

  March 29, 2021 Bill Hammond

  Today, the job of managing security on IBM i can be complicated, requiring dynamic technologies and processes that can respond quickly to ever-evolving threats and new regulations. Ransomware and other malware can, and has, infected IBM i systems and effective access control is a major weapon in the battle to secure your IBM i. There are many different approaches and technologies you can use to keep your IBM i secure.

  Using the exit points provided by the IBM i operating system can be a powerful tool to monitor and secure four important levels of access within the IBM i:

  • Networks

  …

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• Locking Down Exit Point And IFS Vulnerabilities On IBM i

  March 24, 2021 Pauline Brazil Ayala

  It’s true that the IBM i server is among the most securable servers on the planet. But all too often, customers do not take the time to secure their environments properly. This is particularly true for two of the most oft-neglected components of the IBM i environment: exit points and the IFS.

  IBM introduced exit points with the launch of OS/400 V3R1 way back in 1994. We remember that version well here at Trinity Guard, because soon after that, we developed the industry’s first exit point monitoring software for the AS/400 at PentaSafe, the spiritual predecessor of our company. …

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