• The Platform Matters More Than Ever, The Operating System Less So

  April 16, 2018 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Those of us who have been in the IBM midrange for three or four decades are so used to thinking about systems and application platforms for so long it is hard to remember that this sort of thinking is fairly new to the rest of the IT community that did not grow up on proprietary mainframes or midrange gear. Platforms matter more than ever and continue to evolve, but that core operating system – the basic kernel that runs on a processor and has some management features on it – is changing very slowly.

  This is not a bad thing. …

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• IBM Patches ‘ROBOT’ Flaw in IBM i Crypto Library

  February 21, 2018 Alex Woodie

  IBM has issued patches to fix a serious security problem in the IBM Global Security Kit, or GSKit, a relatively obscure crypto package that implements SSL/TLS encryption algorithms across a variety of IBM products, including IBM i. An old flaw in the underlying RSA crypto algorithm that could let hackers decrypt data in a “side channel” attack has resurfaced under a new moniker: “ROBOT.”

  GSKit is an IBM toolkit that implements various encryption-related functions, including symmetric and asymmetric ciphers, random number generation, hashing algorithms, and encryption key management capabilities, for products that need over-the-wire encryption, including IBM i, Linux, and …

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• Modernizing The IBM i Estate For Digital Transformation

  February 12, 2018 Alex Woodie

  For those that use it, the IBM i platform is a workhorse of a machine, faithfully executing critical business processes day in and day out, with a minimum of fuss and upkeep. However, the long-term dependability of the IBM i platform comes with a potentially nasty side effect: technological stagnation caused by inattention and a disinclination for change.

  Like the old commercials for Maytag showed, reliability has a price. For the home appliance maker, the cost of above-average reliability was a lower revenue stream on the maintenance side of the business. While the manufacturers building shoddy washing machines may have …

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• IBM Power Champions: Showing Passion For The Platform

  February 7, 2018 Alex Woodie

  Having a job working on the IBM i-Power Systems platform isn’t easy. Compared to the vast Intel X86 ecosystem, IBM i folks make up a tiny, oft-overlooked minority. That’s one reason why it’s so important to have strong and passionate leaders that the wider installed based can look up to. Along that vein, last week IBM unveiled its 2018 class of Power Systems Champions, which includes a good number of passionate IBM i types.

  IBM named 60 Power Systems Champions for 2018. Out of those 60 Champions, 22 are new to the program, while 38 are returning. Twenty-six of the …

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• IBM Readies Mainstream Power9 Iron For Launch

  February 5, 2018 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  The natives are getting restless, as my parents used to say when we were getting hungry. And the IBM i and AIX bases are definitely getting restless to know what Power9 iron that will be able to run Big Blue’s own operating systems in conjunction with the PowerVM server virtualization hypervisor. They also want to know if IBM is going to give customers a big improvement in price/performance compared to Power7+ and Power8 machines that are still widely available in the channel.

  In short, they want to plan their future, and after four years of waiting, it is time.

  IBM …

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• Rocket Gits Hip to Emerging IBM i Tech

  January 31, 2018 Alex Woodie

  When it comes to managing traditional IBM i development environments, Rocket Software has its bases covered. But as younger technologies and younger developers find their way onto the platform, Rocket found that it had some work to do to ensure that DevOps – or application lifecycle management (ALM), if you like — runs as smoothly as its enterprise customers expect. That’s the case with the vendor’s announcement today around Git.

  Rocket Software today announced that it’s now supporting Git with the Aldon Lifecycle Manager (Enterprise Edition), the company’s ALM product for open systems environments like Windows, Linux, and Unix. The …

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• Investment And Integration Indicators For IBM i

  January 22, 2018 Dan Burger

  Steve Will can talk a blue streak. IBM, sometimes referred to as Big Blue, pays Will to do that. As chief architect of the IBM i operating system, he has a lot of other responsibilities, too. One of them is to listen. He travels around the world talking with and listening to IBM i customers.

  Last week, Will stopped by Southern California to attend the OCEAN user group meeting in Orange County. In his keynote session, he talked about IBM i strategy (that’s a bigger part of his job than listening), investments, and commitment to the future of the platform. …

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• IBM’s Systems Group On The Financial Rebound

  January 22, 2018 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  We like to start with the good news here in 2018, and the good news is that IBM had a very good quarter in its systems business, so we can all start breathing a little easier and Hitachi can put that checkbook away because Big Blue ain’t going to be selling off its System z and Power Systems business any time soon.

  (We are joking there. We think. . . . and hope.)

  In the final quarter of 2017 ended in December, the mainframe saw sales shoot up 71 percent thanks to the System z14 refresh that started in …

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• ARCAD Procures Funding To Fuel Expansion

  December 13, 2017 Dan Burger

  The financial incentives instigating investors to back companies that create software and provide services to the IBM i community continue to raise eyebrows and elicit surprise among those unfamiliar with the innovation taking place in the so-called legacy netherworld.

  Another glimpse of this appeared last week when ARCAD Software announced it received a € 2.5 million ($2.95 million in US currency) investment from the European equity firm Alto Invest. ARCAD develops and markets DevOps and modernization solutions for platforms that include IBM i, Unix, Linux, Windows and z/OS. This is the first external funding ARCAD has received during its …

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• The AS/400 Lessons Come Back Around With Power9 Systems

  December 11, 2017 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  For many years before I took the job as Systems Editor at The Register and in the years since I left that post, the joke about any new system or device was: “Yes, but can it run Crysis?” Those of us writing stories would bend a few sentences around the idea, particularly with Linux systems, which if you equipped them with the WINE Windows emulator might allow said device to indeed run that first-person shooter game that was popular from 2007 through 2013.

  As we think about the new “Witherspoon” Power9 server that IBM launched last week, we can’t help …

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