• 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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• IBM i Community Predictions For 2022, Part 3

  January 17, 2022 Alex Woodie

  Due to an unprecedented response from the community, we are running a third installment of 2022 predictions. The third (and final) round of predictions kicks off with an optimistic prophecy from Charles Guarino, the president of Central Park Data Systems, who has a very bright outlook for the year ahead in IBM i land.

  “As business confidence and optimism rallies, IT budgets will become less restrained,” Guarino tells IT Jungle. “Even those with the least maintained and enhanced legacy systems will experience modernization pressure. This will come from all sources, internal, external and industry compliance, all demanding swift …

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• Yes, AI Is Happening on IBM i, and It’s Happening Now

  October 20, 2021 Alex Woodie

  Artificial intelligence is often thought of as a futuristic technology that may have repercussions for IBM i, but only in the future. Maybe AI will be important to IBM i about the same time when we have flying cars and moving sidewalks. But as a recent POWERUp presentation by an IBM cloud and AI architect shows, AI is already happening on the IBM i server, and it’s happening today.

  Benoit Marolleau, who is the cloud and AI architect for the IBM Client Center Montpellier (France), made a compelling case for IBM i shops to start exploring how they can potentially …

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• IBM i Open Source Gets Better With Fall 2021 TRs

  September 20, 2021 Alex Woodie

  The open source community has become a big source of new software for the IBM i platform in recent years, if not the biggest contributor. To that end, the recent Technology Refreshes (TRs) for IBM i 7.3 and 7.4 bring a dozen or so new or updated packages to the platform.

  One of the most exciting additions to IBM i’s open source repertoire is tn5250, a bare-bones terminal emulator for accessing IBM i system and application screens. Distributed via Source Forge, tn5250 is a Windows program that enables users to access green screens from the Secure Shell (SSH) terminal. …

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• Want to Talk IBM i OSS? Head Up the Ryver

  September 1, 2021 Alex Woodie

  The world of open source moves quickly, and it’s no different on the IBM i platform, where open source is being rapidly adopted by companies large and small. IBM i professionals who want to keep up to speed with the latest may want to check out a community of IBM i open source enthusiasts that was created on Ryver.

  Ryver (pronounced “river”) is a next-gen communications portal that’s taking on Slack, Microsoft Teams, and others. Like chatrooms and mailing lists, Ryver allows people to have open discussions, as well as private chats and focused conversations. There is also the …

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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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• What’s In the Top 5 Hottest IBM i RFEs

  March 17, 2021 Alex Woodie

  The IBM i platform’s greatest strength is its committed user base, whose long-lasting loyalty is unique in the annals of the business computer industry. IBM encourages its committed customers to get involved with shaping the future of the platform through the Request for Enhancement (RFE) process, which plays out in the public for all to see.

  IBM’s RFE process also supports the ability for users to submit requests privately, and there are undoubtedly plenty of these requests made. Obviously, we have no insight into these private RFEs (although they would be fun to read). Among the public RFEs, there …

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• Guru: For IBM i Newcomers, An Access Client Solutions Primer

  March 1, 2021 Rob McNelly

  I enjoy reading about IBM i Fresh Faces. Sure, it’s refreshing to see that it’s not just graybeards like me who are working on the platform, but what really matters is that young people are learning about, getting hands-on with, and coming to love IBM i. I appreciate that many of these stories revolve around system/application modernization and open source solutions. This gives newcomers to IBM i a degree of comfort by reducing their learning curve.

  Learning any new technology is challenging. Specifically, how do you go from learning about the concepts to actually getting on a machine and …

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• To 2032 . . . And Beyond!

  December 7, 2020 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  As you sit here in 2020, can you even imagine 2032? Can you imagine beyond that? Oddly enough, I can imagine three or four decades out from here a lot more easily than I can do a dozen years, even though I know the error bars get longer and the probabilistic clouds get fuzzier the further into the future you wander with your mind. So what does it mean, really, when Big Blue commits to support the IBM i platform at least until 2032, a mere dozen years away in a platform that, depending on how you want to …

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• Open Source The Path To Software Riches For IBM i

  December 2, 2020 Alex Woodie

  For what is supposed to be a proprietary platform, the IBM i server sure has a lot of open source software running on it. In recent months, it appears that the majority of new programs introduced to IBM i are open source in nature. That pattern shows no signs of changing any time soon, according to a recent report by OpenLogic.

  Open software has existed on the IBM i platform for many years. The first highly publicized dip into the open source well occurred in 2005, when IBM partnered with a company called Zend to bring its PHP runtime to …

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