OS/400 V5R4 Archives

How Managed Service Providers De-Risk Technologies For Customers

August 21, 2024 Timothy Prickett Morgan

When you run your own IT shop, you can only absorb new techniques and technologies as fast as your people can learn about them. Managed service providers, on the other hand, generally have a higher level of expertise and they spread the cost of learning about and investing in new technologies across hundreds to thousands to tens of thousands of customers, and they can develop expertise across different solutions, targeting various industries and use cases.

But perhaps more importantly, MSPs take the risk out of you trying something new, which makes it far more likely for you to deploy technologies …
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The State Of The Power Systems Base 2024: The Operating Systems

February 12, 2024 Timothy Prickett Morgan

What stays in the field longer? The hardware or the software? Well, if you are talking about the IBM i installed base, or indeed that of any legacy systems out there like z/OS or Windows Server, the hardware can often be upgraded easier than the software and so it tends to not stay in the field as long. On average, of course.

In the real world, it all comes down to specifics. And you have to analyze and interpret the trend lines very carefully so as to not jump to the wrong conclusions.

So it is with the decade long …
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In The IBM i Trenches With: LightEdge Solutions

December 13, 2023 Timothy Prickett Morgan

The nature of the IBM i market is changing as the nature of the IBM i installed base is changing. With skills in short supply – and getting shorter by the day – and the work piling higher and higher as companies try to tackle application modernization and integration, different ways of acquiring and consuming compute and storage, and modern data analytics and artificial intelligence, we are entering an age where managed service and cloud suppliers will usurp the position formerly held by the business partners who worked downstream from IBM peddling and supporting on-premises Power Systems machinery.

Because variety …
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Integrated Does Not Have To Mean Included And Invoiced

October 10, 2022 Timothy Prickett Morgan

In this era of “pay for what you eat” cloud computing – maybe they should have called it “buffet computing” after all because there sure as hell is nothing cloudy about the bill when it comes – it seems odd that customers can’t pick a la carte the things they want and they don’t want in a system that nonetheless has all of its myriad components and services integrated.

Let’s start by saying we love that the IBM i system is integrated, with one throat to choke (for the most part) when things go wrong. We are strong believers in …
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The State Of The IBM i Base 2022, Part One: The Operating System

February 14, 2022 Timothy Prickett Morgan

You probably already figured this out, but we love data here at The Four Hundred, and we are always particularly keen on any data that helps us to understand the IBM i ecosystem better. And that is why we always look forward to the annual IBM i Marketplace Survey report that comes out in January each year from HelpSystems, and because we are thankful for the data they gather, we help push the survey every year and also participate in the webinar for it as well as a donation to the IBM i community.

IT Jungle co-editor Alex Woodie …
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In The IBM i Trenches With: IBM Champion Ash Giddings

December 13, 2021 Timothy Prickett Morgan

It may be hard to believe, but not everybody who has worked on an AS/400, iSeries, System i, or IBM i platform is a programmer. Even if they care a great deal about programs and how they run on the boxes. Ash Giddings, who is an IBM Champion in 2021 and a newly appointed product manager at high availability software provider Maxava, is one such chap, and we got an opportunity to have a chat with Giddings about what is going on with performance management, systems management, disaster recovery, and high availability out there in the IBM i base.

Like …
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Expanding The Operating System Matrix For Power10

November 1, 2021 Timothy Prickett Morgan

As enterprise platforms go, the Power Systems family of machines has had an expansive operating system support matrix. One of the reasons why the Power line has persisted – and its rivals at Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Sun Microsystems did not – is that not only did IBM keep making enhancements to its proprietary AIX and OS/400/IBM i platforms, but two decades ago formally adopted SUSE Linux Enterprise Server and Red Hat Enterprise Linux as alternative platforms.

With the launch of the “Cirrus” Power10 processors in the enterprise-class “Denali” Power E1080 in early September, IBM continued its long practice of …
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In The IBM i Trenches With: Computer Plus

March 29, 2021 Timothy Prickett Morgan

Welcome to a new series in The Four Hundred called In The IBM i Trenches.

We spend a lot of time talking to people at IBM and at the key suppliers of systems software, application software, and development tools for the IBM i platform. But the ecosystem is a lot bigger than these players. There are thousands of resellers, each serving tens to hundreds to sometimes thousands of customers, depending. There are suppliers of third party maintenance as well as technical support and all kinds of programming and system management services. And there are an increasing number of hosting …
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