• The GenAI Boom Is Only Slightly Louder Than The Dot Com Boom

  September 29, 2025 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  In most markets, revenues and hopefully profits go from exponential growth to log growth to linear growth in the fullness of time. We are living in the exponential phase of AI, and for GenAI in particular, where the x in y=a^x is a pretty big number and the resulting revenue growth looks like the proverbial hockey stick.

  The numbers can be a bit surreal, as they seemed back in the Dot Com boom, where we turned on mainstream stores into warehouses with delivery services. With AI, we are turning the digital data of our lives into data warehouses and …

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• Talking Training And Skills With System i Developer

  September 29, 2025 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Between 2007 and 2021, the partners in System i Developer – Susan Gantner, Jon Paris, and Paul Tuohy – hosted two RPG & Db2 Summit events per year to help OS/400 and IBM i shops create better databases and the applications that ride atop them. The coronavirus pandemic put the kibosh on these in-person events and were, frankly, a lot of work for the partners to bring together and represented a huge financial risk as all in person events always do. (I know this from personal experience over at my other job at The Next Platform.)

  But after Tuohy …

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• Maybe Stopgap Your Legacy Data Issues And Wait for What’s Next?

  September 29, 2025 Alex Woodie

  The temptation to move off legacy systems like IBM i and System Z is overwhelming for some companies. First, there are business issues, such as enabling data integration and real-time capabilities, that older systems legitimately struggle with. Plus, the siren call from Kubernetes and microservices is getting louder. But the longer you can hold on to current systems and wait for next-gen AI-powered systems to emerge, the better off you will be.

  That’s the advice being proffered by the folks at Adeptia, a 20-year-old Chicago-based technical services firm that has worked on data integration issues with many Fortune 500 …

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• Stelo Touts Data Replication For IBM i In Azure Cloud

  September 29, 2025 Alex Woodie

  If you are in the market for data replication software for IBM i, you might want to check out Stelo (formerly StarQuest). The company has supported the IBM i server for many years, and recently announced that its software is available on the Microsoft Azure Marketplace.

  Stelo got its start back in 1992, when Paul Rampel founded StarQuest to develop data connectivity tools for IBM, Microsoft, and Cisco Systems environments. The company launched the Host Data Replicator (HDR) product in 1998, when was adapted with real-time capabilities to become the StarQuest Data Replicator (SQDR) product in 2001.

  In 2022, StarQuest …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 27, Number 39

  September 29, 2025 Doug Bidwell

  It is another quiet week in IBM i Land, where we once again have two security bulletins but also have a transition to end of support services for the Power S924.

  On the security vulnerability front, we have Security Bulletin: IBM i is affected by denial of service vulnerabilities in IBM WebSphere Application Server Liberty [CVE-2025-36097, CVE-2025-36047, CVE-2025-48976], which you can find out more here. Here are the patches for this issue by release:

  IBM i Release	5770-SS1 Option 3	PTF Number(s)
  7.6				        SJ06595
  7.5				        SJ06596
  7.4				        SJ06597
  7.3				        SJ06599	
  7.2				        SJ06601
  

  Second, we have Security Bulletin: IBM i …

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• And Then There Were Two: Big Blue Withdraws IBM i 7.4

  September 22, 2025 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  UPDATED: If you have a compelling reason to stay on IBM i 7.4 and need a license to it for a machine, or if IBM i 7.4 is the last release you can get your applications to without a major change in that code, then you have better shake a leg. Because IBM i 7.4 is only going to be sold for a few more months.

  In announcement letter AD25-0894, which was dated September 16, Big Blue said that it would stop selling the IBM i 7.4 operating system on April 30, 2026. A bunch of other related system …

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• Crossroads RMC Shows Off New AI Dashboard at inPOWER 2025

  September 22, 2025 Alex Woodie

  Crossroads RMC will be showing off its new AI-powered dashboard at Infor’s inPOWER 2025 event this week in Wisconsin. The new offering, dubbed the NextTrack Analytics Dashboard, allows users to ask questions about data residing in ERP database using plain English, thereby broadening the availability of actionable information to new groups of users.

  Crossroads RMC has built a name for itself within the Infor ERP community thanks to its solutions for manufacturers. The company’s manufacturing execution systems (MES) offering sit comfortably atop ERP LX, M3, and other ERP systems, providing access to shop floor scheduling capabilities that do not exist …

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• Guru: When Attention Turns To You – Writing Your Own ATTN Program

  September 22, 2025 Gregory Simmons

  Most IBM i users press the Attention key without much thought. They’re used to the familiar system-supplied menu popping up, or maybe a command line depending on how their profile is configured. But buried in the system is a powerful customization point: you can assign your own ATTN program. Doing so gives you the ability to intercept that key and provide functionality tailored exactly to your shop’s needs. There are three main ways to establish an attention program, each with its own strengths and tradeoffs.

  The most obvious method is at the user profile level. Within the profile’s attributes is …

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• Rocket Taps IDC To Assess The Benefits Of Full Scope IT Modernization

  September 22, 2025 Alex Woodie

  It wasn’t long ago that the words “IT modernization” conjured images of old, clunky 5250 screens becoming nimble, fresh Web interfaces. That is one form of modernization, but today the phrase can refer to a gamut of upgrades across applications, infrastructure, skills, processes, and people. So what defines success with IT modernization in 2025? Rocket Software recently commissioned IDC to find out.

  To understand what modernization means today and how well organizations are pursuing it, IDC polled 822 IT modernization decision-makers at organizations in North America, Europe, and the Asia/Pacific region. The surveyed firms included companies in financial services, healthcare, …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 27, Number 38

  September 22, 2025 Doug Bidwell

  It’s another quiet week in Lake Security Vulnerabilities Be Gone, with the drought on the Eastern seaboard meeting a cold snap that is bringing autumn colors to the leaves a bit earlier than many had expected or liked. It is better than rain, mind you, except when it starts fires.

  The good news is that there were no security vulnerabilities this week. So all secure there if you are up to date.

  Here is the rundown of PTF Groups by IBM i release level since we last published:

  PTF Groups 7.6:

  • SAP support required PTF list for IBM i 7.6

  … Read more

• Positive News From The Kyndryl Mainframe Modernization Report

  September 15, 2025 Alex Woodie

  After a week of bad news, here’s something good to start your week: The costs of mainframe modernization projects are dropping while the return on investment (ROI) is rising, in large part due to AI. That’s according to Kyndryl’s 2025 State of Mainframe Modernization Survey, which documented “a degree of agility” the company wasn’t expecting in the massive projects.

  As it has for the past two years, Kyndryl commissioned Coleman Parkes Research to conduct a global survey of about 500 senior leaders at mainframe-using enterprises. By mainframe, the former IBM consulting business refers to System Z systems, IBM i …

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• NAViGATE, inPower 2025 On Tap for September 2025

  September 15, 2025 Alex Woodie

  As the summer turns to fall, IBM i professionals will be turning out to a pair of events being hosted in the Midwest, including Infor’s imPower 2025 conference in Wisconsin, and COMMON’s NAViGATE conference taking place in Pennsylvania. Both shows are expected to draw hundreds of participants.

  NAViGATE 2025 takes place this week in Pittsburgh. COMMON is hosting about 110 sessions on IBM i topics across the three-day event, including sessions on application development, security, high availability, and administering the system.

  Tim Rowe, an IBM architect for application development, and Julia Yan, the lead developer of Navigator for i, will …

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• Guru: WCA4i And Granite – Because You’ve Got Bigger Things To Build

  September 15, 2025 Gregory Simmons

  They said AI would change everything. Then most of it turned into chatbot demos and marketing decks. But watsonX Code Assistant for i (WCA4i for short), backed by IBM’s own Granite large language model, is doing something IBM i developers might actually care about: Helping you understand, transform, and evolve legacy code without tossing decades of business logic into the fire.

  WCA4i isn’t trying to slap a web UI over your green screens or auto-generate JavaScript for the sake of buzzwords. It’s aimed at something deeper – leveraging an AI foundation model that’s actually trained on IBM i code and …

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• As I See It: Digital Coup

  September 15, 2025 Victor Rozek

  “If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him.” Those dire words were spoken in the 17th century by Cardinal Richelieu, the perfect deadly blend of Church and State, who served as chief minister to King Louis XIII of France.

  To maintain power, Richelieu employed eerily familiar methods notably censorship, forbidding discussion of political matters in public places, suppressing dissent and, most important, data collection. Richelieu employed a vast network of spies who gathered information on dissenters and potential enemies. Those who were …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 27, Number 37

  September 15, 2025 Doug Bidwell

  This week in IBM i Land, we have two security bulletins, and new System Planning Tool adding the Power11 machines, and a bunch of new microcode. Let’s start with the security vulnerabilities as we always do.

  First, we have Security Bulletin: IBM WebSphere Application Server and WebSphere Application Server Liberty are affected by a denial of service due to Apache Commons FileUpload (CVE-2025-48976). The affected products are:

  Affected Product(s)				Version(s)
  IBM WebSphere Application Server		9.0
  IBM WebSphere Application Server		8.5
  IBM WebSphere Application Server Liberty		17.0.0.3 - 25.0.0.8
  

  Second, we have Security Bulletin: IBM WebSphere Application Server Liberty could provide …

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• AI Is Coming for ERP. How Will IBM i Respond?

  September 8, 2025 Alex Woodie

  A wave of artificial intelligence is beginning to wash over the enterprise resource planning software market, changing the nature of how businesses process automation gets done. IBM i has been a solid platform for running ERP systems for decades. But how will the new generation of AI-enabled enterprise apps get to IBM i?

  When it comes to automating business processes, ERP packages have been the primary means for achieving it for the past four decades. The big monolithic apps from SAP, Oracle, Infor, and dozens of others have driven trillions of dollars in value by providing a …

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• The Power And Storage Price Wiggling Continues – Again

  September 8, 2025 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Here we go again . . . again. The people in charge of setting global prices for Power Systems and Storage products are rejiggering prices. In announcement letter AD25-1477, dated September 1 and effective on October 1, prices are changing in global markets due to changes in the foreign exchange rates between the United States and those countries.

  To be specific, the following countries are seeing the following price changes:

  • Japan, 3.5 percent
  • India, 2.1 percent
  • Philippines, 1.4 percent
  • Hong Kong, 1.2 percent
  • New Zealand, 0.6 percent

  The interesting bit is that back in early July, IBM had cut prices …

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• LaserVault Adds Multi-Path Support To ViTL

  September 8, 2025 Alex Woodie

  LaserVault is shipping a new release of its virtual tape library software that is likely to find a warm reception among customers who need different retention periods for their IBM i backups. By enabling ViTL 4.0 to support multiple storage paths to backend storage appliances, it’s allowing customers to reduce the amount of data they store and giving them an overall more efficient backup environment.

  ViTL is the name of LaserVault’s flagship virtual tape library (VLT) for IBM i, which the company (also known as known as Electronic Storage Corp) launched back in 2018. The product, which emulates …

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• As I See It: Spacing Out

  September 8, 2025 Victor Rozek

  Computer rooms have always been somewhat problematic to build and maintain: Raised floors, 24/7 air conditioning, a reliable power supply, and, for larger installations, a backup power source. These requirements were spendy but manageable at least until the rise of AI. To put it bluntly, AI is a resource hog, addicted to excess. Its drugs of choice are land and energy.

  The future of datacenters is unfolding in Abilene, Texas. There, Project Stargate is under construction, and the mega-scale OpenAI datacenter can hardly be called affordable. Its estimated cost is $500 billion. The facility includes a whopping eight million square …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 27, Numbers 34, 35, And 36

  September 8, 2025 Doug Bidwell

  We are determined to get back in synch with the publication schedule of The Four Hundred and the IBM i PTF Guide, so this week you get three issues of the latter inside of one issue of the former, a necessity because PTFs never rest even if publications do take a breather every once in a while.

  In Number 34, this was the rundown of PTF Groups by IBM i release level we did on August 23:

  PTF Groups 7.6:

  • HIPERs – High Impact Pervasive
  • Group Security

  PTF Groups 7.5:

  • HIPERs (High Impact/Pervasive)
  • Group Security

  PTF Groups 7.4:

  • HIPERs

  … Read more

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