• You’re Only As Old As The Applications You Feel

  June 24, 2020 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  You didn’t actually think that we would have forgotten that Sunday, June 21^st, was the 32^nd birthday of the Application System/400, did you? Of course we didn’t forget.

  It was also Father’s Day and the first day of summer, and to be perfectly frank (Soltis), I got a new smoker from my wife and I spent the afternoon learning about the joys of hickory smoked barbeque ribs. It is a gift that just keeps giving, because I made about 40 pounds of meat in various kinds and flavors because I needed to try everything all at once. …

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• The End is Near for Zend Server Basic PHP

  May 20, 2020 Alex Woodie

  Zend Server Basic, the free PHP runtime used by thousands of IBM i shops, will cease being offered starting in July 2021. That’s the word from Perforce, the company that now owns Zend and its lineup of PHP tools and technologies. The replacement, of course, is the new community edition of PHP that became available via RPM in late 2019.

  Starting in 2006, Zend Technology began to develop a special version of its PHP runtime for IBM i, which was then called i5/OS. This offering, dubbed Zend Core for i5/OS, provided a familiar way for users of the iSeries server …

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• Where Is IBM i?

  May 13, 2020 Alex Woodie

  If you’ve worked with the IBM i platform for any length of time, you realize that it can be hard to find. That’s true in the field, where companies sometimes aren’t even aware their applications are running on an IBM i system. But it’s also true when it comes to IBM’s own website, where you’d think i might be easier to find.

  Finding the IBM i homepage by navigating IBM’s website (www.ibm.com) is a bit like searching for the bathroom in the mall by walking the entire length of every floor. You know it has to be there. …

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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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• The Midrange Gets Pinched A Little More

  March 16, 2020 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  The X86 server market turned in its best quarter ever in the final three months of 2019, will more machinery going out the door and more money coming in than has ever happened in the history of the systems market. Even if you adjusted sales in past quarters for inflation, it is still true. It was kind of crazy, even with some soft sales among OEM suppliers, the combination of ODM sales to hyperscalers and cloud builders. X86 server shipments rose by 12.9 percent to 3.35 million machines and revenues rose by 6.3 percent to $22.44 billion, according to the …

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• Big Blue Cuts Deals On Entry Power Systems Iron

  March 9, 2020 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  With no new Power processors on the immediate horizon, except a kicker Power9’ that is aimed at supercomputer systems providing a testbed for future high bandwidth main memory technology that will debut with the Power10 chips in 2021, IBM has to do something to try to move some iron. Price cuts are always a good incentive.

  And so, we see in announcement letter ZAEP0091B, which was quietly updated on March 5, when it came to our attention, after being announced on January 24, when we did not see in the IBM online announcement feed (because it wasn’t there, not …

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• Happy Holidays From All Of Us To All Of You

  December 16, 2019 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  It’s hard to believe, but when January rolls around, we will start publishing the 30th volume of The Four Hundred. This is a long time to do anything, and many editors have come and gone with this publication over the years – some down other career paths, others being stopped in their tracks on this path and leaving this world too early. We are honored to have worked with them all and to do the work of serving the AS/400, iSeries, System i, and IBM i community, and we carry on this work in their honor.

  This time …

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• Microsoft Wants to Migrate Your IBM i Code to Azure

  November 13, 2019 Alex Woodie

  Microsoft is executing a plan with its partner Skytap to bring IBM i into its Azure cloud, as we’ve previously told you about. But another group within the technology giant has plans of its own to migrate IBM i applications to languages that can run natively on X86 servers and integrate more easily with Azure services.

  We caught wind of this group’s code migration plan a month ago when one of the technical specialists in the Microsoft Azure Global Customer Advisory Team (CAT) wrote a blog entry about the work they do. IT Jungle followed up with the IBM i …

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• IBM Gives A Peek Of The Future At POWERUp 2019

  May 20, 2019 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  It would not be a COMMON, or even a POWERUp, conference without some glimpse into the future by IBM to give customers of its Power Systems line a sense of what lies ahead near the horizon. By doing so, Big Blue can provide comfort to customers that it is working on future technologies and services without revealing its hand too much to competitors.

  Steve Sibley, vice president of offerings for the Cognitive Systems division, which is the part of IBM that makes and sells Power Systems iron, participated in the opening session of the POWERUp 2019 conference in Anaheim on …

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• Assessing IBM i’s Role In Digital Transformation

  March 20, 2019 Alex Woodie

  There comes a time in every application’s life when its owner must take a hard look at its continued viability and ask the tough question: Will the application continue to meet the business’s evolving needs, or should the whole thing be scrapped for something new? These business and technology assessments can be especially tough when the software runs on the IBM i server.

  Many companies these days are looking to modernize their aging IT systems in the hopes of gaining more agility and flexibility. Whether you call it digital transformation or application modernization, the goals are often similar: Simplify the …

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