• A Frank Solstice

  June 20, 2022 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  When you are born in Minnesota, the seasons matter. Unfortunately, as Frank Soltis, the former chief architect of the AS/400 system and the creator of the single-level storage architecture of the System/38 and the AS/400 that is still a marvel, once quipped to us: “There are only two seasons in Minnesota: Winter, and Getting Ready For Winter.”

  And so, you have two options: Play hockey when you aren’t farming, or design excellent computer systems. That’s how supercomputer genius Seymour Cray did it from nearby Wisconsin.

  The AS/400 for which this publication was founded 33 years ago was born on the …

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• IBM Looking To Open Up Debugging On IBM i

  June 8, 2022 Alex Woodie

  Things are moving quickly now in the IBM i development world, particularly when it comes to lightweight, Web-based IDEs, such as IBM’s new Merlin. However, the need to debug programs and the lack of a debugger for these IDEs is causing a bit of a roadblock to developer productivity with these newer IDEs. That’s why IBM is seeking a way to get IBM i debugging capabilities into more people’s hands.

  The official IBM i Debugger product is bundled as a JAR file with IBM Toolbox for Java, and is directly integrated with Rational Developer for i (RDi), IBM’s flagship …

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• Why Steve Will’s Promotions Are A Big Deal For IBM i

  June 6, 2022 Alex Woodie

  As chief architect for IBM i, Steve Will has long been the recognizable face of the IBM i development team in Rochester, Minnesota. Recently, he added two more titles to his cv, including IBM i CTO and distinguished engineer. While the labels are certainly good for Will and an acknowledgment of his hard work, they’re also good for IBM i and bode well for the future of the platform.

  A year after earning a master’s degree in computer science at Purdue University in 1984, Will joined IBM and immediately went to work on the IBM midrange line, first as a …

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• More Price Hikes From IBM, Now For High End Storage

  May 16, 2022 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  The price increases at IBM just keep coming as the company passes on higher component costs, and very likely higher manufacturing and support costs, that it is experiencing thanks to the coronavirus pandemic on to customers. Now we are seeing higher prices on high-end external storage.

  We have covered a number of IBM’s recent price hikes in the past several weeks, which you can see in the Related Stories section at the end of this report. But to characterize them briefly to put the new price increases into context, we have seen inflation in the prices for certain Power9 and …

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• 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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• Connectria, Now A Top AWS Partner, Primed For Hybrid Push

  April 13, 2022 Alex Woodie

  Amazon Web Services has lots and lots of servers and storage — enough to supply the IT needs of more than 1 million customers around the world, including one rather large e-commerce site. The cloud giant also has more than 125,000 business partners helping it to scale out to meet those customer needs. Now, thanks to a recent promotion, IBM i hosting specialist Connectria won’t get lost in the AWS partnership jungle.

  Last week, Connectria announced that AWS has named it a Premier Consulting Partner, the highest echelon in the AWS Partner Network. With just 120 members, the move into …

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• The Low-Down On IBM’s Power Systems Sales

  March 7, 2022 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Late last year, IBM, under the new regime of Arvind Krishna and in the wake of the acquisition of Red Hat and the spinout of the Kyndryl managed services business, reorganized its businesses and the financial reports it gives to Wall Street investors. Generally speaking, the way Big Blue is talking about itself, from a financial perspective, is more accurate than the reorganization it did after Ginny Rometty had been at the IBM helm for a bit. Which is good. But the one downside is that we lost visibility into the Power Systems platform.

  We lamented this when looking at …

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• Four Signs That Point to More IBM i Modernization in ’22

  January 19, 2022 Alex Woodie

  IBM i shops are under the gun to do something about their aging applications, perhaps more so than any other group of computer users out there, save for System z mainframe shops. Here are four factors that increase the odds that more IBM i shops will embark upon modernization efforts and start updating those heritage applications and databases in the new year.

  1. The White-Hot Economy

  Increased consumer spending is likely to continue in early 2022, thanks in part to the strong recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic and the unprecedented financial support provided from the government. The economy is running white …

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• IBM And Samsung Go Vertical To Push Transistor Density On Chips

  January 10, 2022 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Big Blue might have sold off its IBM Microelectronics chip fabrication operation to GlobalFoundries many years ago, but that does not mean that the company does not still do a reasonably large amount of fundamental research into chip maker techniques and tricks. Transistor, chip, and packaging research and development is a big portion of the patent portfolio at IBM and continues to be so because Big Blue still has some of the smartest chipheads on the planet working for it because IBM wants to ensure there is a roadmap for future Power and System z processors and because it can …

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• AWS Offers Mainframe Migration Service. Is IBM i Next?

  December 6, 2021 Alex Woodie

  Amazon Web Services, the world’s largest cloud service provider, last week unveiled a new service to help IBM mainframe customers modernize their workloads and move them to the cloud. Will the cloud giant, which says it’s completely driven by the needs of its customers, launch a similar service for midrange workloads running on IBM i?

  AWS Mainframe Modernization is a new service AWS launched at its re:Invent conference last week that aims at making it “faster and easier to migrate mainframe and legacy workload to the cloud.” In addition to AWS components, the service includes roles for systems integrators, such …

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