• Big Blue Readies Power10 And IBM i 7.5 Training for Partners

  May 16, 2022 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Whenever there is a big product announcement from IBM, there are months and months of field work that gets done ahead of that super Tuesday when the customers are notified of the new systems and systems software that has been in development for years and that is finally available. Well, usually available within a few weeks if not at announcement.

  That announcement education and training machine has been in motion for months, and the next and penultimate phase of this process is soon going to be underway, which means that Big Blue is getting ready to launch Power10 systems into …

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• IBM i Community Reacts to IBM i 7.5

  May 11, 2022 Alex Woodie

  With the first new version of IBM i in over three years, IBM has certainly captured the attention of the IBM i community. But what do users think of the new release? What’s catching their eyes? We queried a few members of the community to find out.

  IBM Merlin, a new licensed product that stands for Modernization Engine for Lifecycle Integration, appeared to capture the bulk of the initial attention around the launch of IBM i 7.5.

  Consisting of VS Code IDE, DevOps and CI/CD software from Git and Jenkins, and IBM i-native tools from ARCAD Software — all …

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• In The IBM i Trenches With: Chilli IT

  May 9, 2022 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  There are many strengths in the IBM i platform besides its hardware and software architecture or the sophistication and ease of programming embodied in its development tools. The diversity of its partner ecosystem is another strength.

  As we pointed out last March with the launch of our ongoing In The IBM i Trenches series, globally there are thousands of resellers, each serving tens to hundreds to sometimes thousands of customers, as well as thousands of suppliers of third party maintenance, of technical support, of programming and system management services, and now of hosting and cloud computing. We want to get …

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• Announcement Day: IBM Lifts The Veil On IBM i 7.5 And 7.4 TR6

  May 3, 2022 Alex Woodie

  Big Blue today announced IBM i version 7.5, the first new version of the operating system in three years. Among the big new features with this release are enhancements to Db2 Mirror, better security configurations, and new database features. A new modernization framework called Merlin and a new IBM i subscription option were also unveiled by IBM, which also announced IBM i 7.4 Technology Release 6.

  One of the big headlines with the IBM i 7.5 announcement is Merlin, which IBM says stands for the Modernization Engine for Lifecycle Integration. Merlin provides a lightweight, browser-based development environment for creating new …

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• There Were Actually More Power Systems Price Hikes Than We Thought

  April 25, 2022 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Last week, we told you about two price hikes on Power Systems hardware, software, and services that were announced on April 13 and take effect for hardware and software on May 7 and for selected Software Maintenances services on July 1.

  One of the price changes came in our announcement letter roundup and the other came through the business partner network, and on a hunch on Sunday night with another story still needing to be written, I logged into the IBM announcement letter system to see if anything had happened while I was away last week sitting in the sun …

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• ALL400s Survey Paints a Picture of IBM i Community

  April 20, 2022 Alex Woodie

  It’s been three years since John Rockwell ran an ALL400s survey, which he periodically ran several times before. At the urging of members of the IBM i community, Rockwell recently ran another survey, and he shared his conclusions with IT Jungle.

  At first glance, the results of the latest ALL400s survey, which includes responses from more than 600 people, shows what you might expect. For starters, we all know the IBM i community is getting older, with retirements looming for some. That shouldn’t come as a surprise. But as one drills down into the results themselves, a more nuanced …

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• Infor CM3 to Provide On-Prem Alternative to Cloudy M3

  April 20, 2022 Alex Woodie

  For years, Infor has been leading with the cloud when it comes to M3, the ERP system formerly known as Movex. But now, the software giant is readying a new hybrid deployment option called CM3 that will run in a Linux or Windows container and IBM i.

  Long before Infor completed its Lawson acquisition in April 2012 — even before Lawson finished its acquisition of Intentia in 2006 — plans were solidly in place to migrate the core RPG code underpinning the Movex suite to Java, thereby opening the software to run on platforms besides just IBM i, its historical …

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• Reader Feedback On State Of The IBM i Base, IBM i Salaries

  April 11, 2022 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Hey, TPM:

  I have been enjoying your series on the state of the IBM i environment. Those and other recent IT Jungle articles have helped me better understand some of the things that I am seeing as a training vendor.

  As you and I have often discussed, the IBM i market has divided into two groups: the roughly 30,000 active customers and 120,000 others. My company, Manta Technologies, has customers among both groups.

  As a former math professor, I tend to think in Venn diagrams. I had to fight the urge to pull out the colored pencils when I read …

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• 7.1 Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest

  April 4, 2022 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  We think there is a lot of Power7, Power7+, and Power8 iron out there in the Power Systems running IBM i base, and we think there is a lot of IBM i 6.1 and IBM i 7.1 running on that iron. Our assertion is based on years of anecdotal evidence from the resellers and business partners we talk to, the customers we talk to, and a whole lot of spreadsheet witchcraft that we do based on survey data we see.

  The point is not just to come up with this data and then drop it and run, but to face …

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• With IBM i Security, You Don’t Know What You Don’t Know

  March 23, 2022 Ron Venzin

  It is not enough to be worried late into the night about the security of your mission critical systems. The IT managers who are in control of the infrastructure at IBM i shops, who also have a lot of Windows Server infrastructure and a smattering of Linux and AIX systems, too, need to actually do something about security. And they have to do something more than just rely on the legendary security of the IBM i platform.

  Security software for the IBM i platform has been around since the early days of the commercial Internet, and while a handful of …

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