SWMA Archives - IT Jungle

Technical Debt: The Silent Killer

October 27, 2021 Alex Woodie

There’s a dangerous malady afflicting companies that rely on the IBM i server to run their business applications. Left undiagnosed and untreated, it can debilitate an IT shop, rendering it unable to take advantage of new opportunities and respond to challenges. It’s called technical debt, and you or an organization you know may be suffering from it as we speak.

Technical debt is a concept that is credited to Ward Cunningham, the American programmer and the co-author of Manifesto for Agile Software Development. “If you develop a program for a long period of time by only adding features but …
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Sundry Power Systems Cloud Announcements

April 26, 2021 Timothy Prickett Morgan

April is generally a busy time for the Power Systems team, and not just for IBM i, but also for AIX and sometimes for Linux, too. In the spirit of Power Systems family unity, and in recognition of the fact that more than a few IBM i shops also have AIX and/or Linux in their shops, we wanted to tell you about some tweaks that Big Blue has made to the other platforms in the Power Systems family.

In announcement letter 221-099, IBM is making some tweaks to the Power Systems Enterprise Cloud Edition stack of software. The components …
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IBM Further Extends Service Extension For IBM i 7.1

October 5, 2020 Timothy Prickett Morgan

Some operating system releases are like Clint Eastwood, and some are like George Burns. And, may Clint Eastwood make it to 100 like George Burns did, now that we think about it. (He’s 9/10ths of the way there.) We don’t mind the word “legacy” as much as some folks, and use the term “vintage” and “heritage” to express the idea less pejoratively and without the negative connotations and baggage.

I don’t go on LinkedIn all that often, and usually only to connect with people I want to interview or have interviewed, but last week when I logged in, I saw …
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IBM Grants Amnesty On Software Maintenance After License Charges

April 20, 2020 Timothy Prickett Morgan

Ask and ye shall receive. Last week, we were asking for Big Blue to wake up and provide a stimulus package for its Power Systems business in general and its IBM i business in particular. And one of the things we asked for – an amnesty canceling so-called after license charges for Software Maintenance for IBM i and AIX platforms was actually quietly announced to business partners – unexpectedly at that – on April 13, the same day our essay ran and three days after we wrote it.

We think this is a coincidence, not causation. And it’s a …
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Final IBM i Software Maintenance Price Increases Released

April 6, 2020 Timothy Prickett Morgan

Back in early March, we told you that Big Blue was getting set to raise the prices it charges for Software Maintenance, short-handed down to SWMA and pronounced “swamma.” We had some estimated pricing, and on March 30, in an updated announcement letter 320-089, IBM released the updated price increases.

They are a bit different from the pricing that we saw in IBM’s initial presentations warning customers about the price increase, and the updated announcement has a spreadsheet that shows all of the different SKUs for SWMA for the P05, P10, P20, P30, P40, P50, and P60 software tiers. …
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Big Blue Raises IBM i Software Maintenance Fees Modestly

March 2, 2020 Timothy Prickett Morgan

Back in the AS/400 days when software was a much smaller part of the overall cost of a system, there were relatively frequent prices changes for both OS/400 and related systems software as well as for the software maintenance applied to OS/400 and those related systems programs.

It has been a long time since IBM increased the license or IBM i Group Software Maintenance, or SWMA as we often call it as shorthand (pronounced Swammah). I can’t even remember the last time IBM i license prices were increased, but I know there was an attempt to raise SWMA prices …
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Going Off IBM Hardware Maintenance A Risky Move

April 15, 2019 Alex Woodie

Organizations that are running older Power Systems servers have some tough decisions coming up. IBM ceased offering hardware support for Power 6 servers on March 31, and support for Power 7 will go away on September 30. Some organizations may choose to support themselves instead of upgrading to a newer machine, but that move comes with substantial risks.

While there’s no central clearinghouse for this sort of information, it would appear that a good percentage of IBM i customers – if not most of them – have hardware and software support agreements with IBM. Big Blue provides three years …
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Goosing Big Iron Power Systems With Power9 Migrations

December 3, 2018 Timothy Prickett Morgan

The Power9-based servers from IBM’s Cognitive Systems division have been rolling out over the course of the past year, and the big iron has been in the field only since the late summer but has perhaps had the largest impact on the revenue and profit stream for the Power Systems line, excepting maybe the installation of the “Summit” and “Sierra” supercomputers for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Lawrence Livermore Laboratory.

As has been the case since the AS/400 line debuted in 1988 and even with the combination of the System/36 (low-end and midrange) and System/38 …
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Big Blue Gives IBM i Shops A Special 30th Birthday Bash Box

May 21, 2018 Dan Burger

Big Blue is in the middle of celebrating three decades of the IBM i platform, and the company has unveiled a special birthday box that commemorates the occasion. It’s essentially a Solutions Edition package with some extra bells and whistles. For those unfamiliar with the Solutions Editions, they are pre-configured systems with a choice of IBM and ISV software discounts applied. Those discounts would be unavailable when buying the systems or the software individually.

The IBM i 30th Edition offering is based on IBM i Solution Edition Power9 Model S914, a P05 tier box, with four cores. All of the …
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IBM Inks In End Of Support For Power6 And Power7 Iron

September 25, 2017 Timothy Prickett Morgan

In case you didn’t notice it, IBM is getting ready to embark on a new generation of systems, based on its “Nimbus” and “Cumulus” Power9 chips.

When new gear is entering the product catalog, IBM has a few tools to help encourage customers to move ahead rather than sitting tight. First, it tends to withdraw the older stuff – in this case systems using Power6, Power6+, Power 7, and Power7+ processors – from marketing. That sends the signal that customers won’t be able to get new processor cards, memory cards, and other peripherals for these machines. Then, IBM can raise …
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