• IBM Raises The Curtain A Little On Future Power Processors

  November 13, 2024 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  We commented back in August when the Hot Chips 2024 conference was underway at Stanford University that it was odd that IBM did reveal some of the speeds and feeds of the Power11 processor that we all know is coming in 2025. And when the TechXchange 2024 partner event was held in Las Vegas a few weeks ago, we were pretty sure that IBM was working on some sort of accelerated system for GenAI applications and a week later we remembered that the obvious pairing was a Power System host with scads of IBM’s own “Spyre” AI accelerators running …

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• IBM’s Fall 2024 Code for IBM i Enhancements

  November 13, 2024 Alex Woodie

  Adoption of Code for i continues to soar among IBM i developers, as they shift from heavy, expensive integrated development environments (IDEs) to lighter, open-source options. With the latest Technology Refreshes (TRs) for IBM i, IBM is making the VS Code plug-in even more useful for RPG and COBOL developers.

  Code for IBM i is the brainchild of Liam Allan, the midrange wunderkind with an intense aversion to Rational Developer for IBM i (RDi), IBM’s Java-based flagship IDE for IBM i. As adoption of the VS Code extension grew in the summer of 2022, IBM smartly hired Allan as a …

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• Unlock Business Continuity: Strategies For Success

  November 13, 2024 Tom Horan

  Ensuring business continuity is vital in today’s rapidly evolving IT landscape. Disruptions from natural disasters, cyberattacks, or human error can severely impact organizations. To thrive amid these challenges, you need robust strategies and cutting-edge technologies. That’s where PowerVS stands out – a formidable computing platform specifically engineered to optimize and strengthen your business continuity.

  The Power Of PowerVS

  Let’s discuss why PowerVS is a groundbreaking solution. It’s more than just a computing platform; it’s a robust performance, reliability, and scalability system.

  Here’s how PowerVS can significantly enhance your IT infrastructure:

  • Reduce Downtime: Envision a scenario in which one need not

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• Four Hundred Monitor, November 13

  November 13, 2024 Jenny Thomas

  It may be a cliché to say time flies, but most of us have done it. If you’ve never fallen victim to that phrase, the next five years may change your mind. It’s been predicted that by 2030, artificial intelligence will not only have the capability to create movies, music, books, and video games, it will become the new standard, and you will suddenly find yourself remembering the good old days of 2024. The IDC has already predicted that  67 percent of the projected $227 billion AI spending in 2025 will come from enterprises embedding AI capabilities into core business …

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• IBM Power for Google Cloud Offering Gets PCI Cert

  November 13, 2024 Alex Woodie

  IBM i shops that want to run their workloads in the Google Cloud may be interested in the latest news out of Converge Technology Solutions, which recently announced that it has completed the PCI-DSS certification for the company’s IBM Power for Google Cloud (IP4G) platform.

  The availability of IBM Power servers in the public cloud has been growing in fits and starts over the past five years. Back in 2019, a Seattle, Washington, company named Skytap (since acquired by Kyndryl) worked to place Power servers within Microsoft Azure data centers. Connectria, one of the biggest private cloud providers, …

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• Fresche Nabs Redbourn Business Systems For Synon Expertise

  November 11, 2024 Alex Woodie

  Fresche Solutions last week acquired Redbourn Business Systems, a UK-based provider of Synon and CA 2E development and consulting services. The move bolsters Fresche’s previous efforts to cater to the needs of IBM i shops that adopted the Synon/2E development language, and also bolsters the company’s European presence.

  Redbourn Business Systems was founded in 1994 by Steve Cast, a longtime RPG programmer and IBM midrange professional who was among the first to port applications from the System/38 to the AS/400 back in the 1980s. The company, which is based in the English village of Redbourn, provides a range of services …

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• Power Systems Distributor Ingram Micro Goes Public (Again)

  November 11, 2024 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  We admit it. It has been a long, long time since we paid much attention to the master distributors that IBM and other IT equipment makers use as a channel between themselves and their systems customers. We used to follow Arrow Electronics and Avnet like a hawk. But we got sidetracked and stopped thinking about them, in part because the late and great Dan Burger used to be our go-to guy for keeping in touch with the Power Systems channel distributors.

  The recent initial public offering of Ingram Micro, which is really the second time the company has gone public …

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• Guru: RPG Receives Enumerator Operator

  November 11, 2024 Gregory Simmons

  The RPG language now (some would argue, finally) has an enumerator operator. This was introduced in IBM i 7.5 TR3 and IBM i 7.4 TR9.

  DISCLAIMER: The edibility of the mushrooms listed in my test program are purely to give the program some context and make it interesting. Their edible status is based on information from the Missouri Department of Conservation’s publication A Guide to Missouri’s Edible and Poisonous Mushrooms. Before foraging for or consuming any wild mushroom do your research and be safe.

  Let’s dive right into a code sample. We’ll start with a simple linear-main program …

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• Gartner Raises IT Spending Forecast For 2024 Again

  November 11, 2024 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  The boom of GenAI just keeps getting louder, and the increasing spending by the hyperscalers and clouds are giving air cover to IT shops all over the world who want to weave GenAI technologies into the applications and processes of their companies and who therefore want to get more IT budget.

  IT spending forecasts are useful because they tell us where we think we are going and they also tell us how our IT shop measures up against the average of all of the IT shops in the world. The typical enterprise is definitely not spending anywhere near as much …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 26, Number 44

  November 11, 2024 Doug Bidwell

  The number of patches slowed down last week, and we are not sure if that had anything to do with the election in the United States, but what we do know is we all got a break. And we will take it, and then get back to work.

  There are a number of security vulnerabilities with WebSphere middleware, an issue with drive logging, and several fixes for TGTRLS in the RPG compilers.

  First, we have Security Bulletin: IBM WebSphere Application Server is vulnerable to an XML External Entity Injection (XXE) vulnerability (CVE-2024-45086), which you can read about here. This …

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• Another GenAI-Powered Testing Tool Comes to IBM i

  November 6, 2024 Alex Woodie

  IBM says it’s bringing a new AI accelerator to the Power line to drive compute-hungry generative AI workloads, such as the new RPG coding assistant that it’s also developing. But IBM won’t be the only source of such GenAI-powered coding assistants, as a company called Abstracta recently announced another one.

  There’s a lot of interest in the Spyre accelerators that IBM announced earlier this year for the System z mainframe and which IBM announced last month during its TechExchange conference will be coming to Power. Considering the massive demand for Nvidia GPUs, which could plug into past generations of Power …

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• The Power Of Hybrid Cloud In Digital Transformation

  November 6, 2024 Tom Horan

  Digital transformation has evolved from a trendy buzzword to an essential strategy for businesses striving to stay ahead in today’s fast-paced environment. At the heart of this transformation lies hybrid cloud solutions, which offer the flexibility, scalability, and cost-efficiency modern enterprises crave. This article delves into how hybrid cloud solutions revolutionize various sectors and share best practices for seamless implementation.

  What Are Hybrid Cloud Solutions?

  Hybrid cloud solutions seamlessly blend on-premises infrastructure with public and private cloud services, creating a unified and adaptable IT environment. Unlike traditional setups confined to on-premises or fully cloud-based solutions, hybrid cloud combines the best …

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• Slicing and Dicing the Future of the Cloud ERP Market

  November 6, 2024 Alex Woodie

  The cloud looms large in the world of enterprise software. Nearly all ERP vendors offer their software in the cloud, and some, such as SAP, are even planning to end support for on-prem deployments. But how big is the market for cloud ERP, who are the leading providers, and what does it all mean for IBM i customers?

  For starters, how big is the global ERP market? This is an important question, but there is no exact answer. The definition of what is enterprise resource planning software is a little bit amorphous, and amortization schedules can make assigning spending to …

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• Four Hundred Monitor, November 6

  November 6, 2024 Jenny Thomas

  Plans are already in the making here in the Jungle for 2025. We have a generous holiday schedule as the news cycle begins to dwindle toward the end of the year, and we have just two more issues of your favorite Four Hundred Monitor planned before we stop the presses for 2024. But before we go getting too jolly, let’s get back to the matter at hand, which is the news of the day. It comes as no surprise that the focus continues to be on AI, but we also have several new resources for you to check out, as …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 26, Number 43

  November 6, 2024 Doug Bidwell

  It is one of those quite weeks in PTF Land, and that is not surprising given the election that was underway as we went to press with this edition of The Four Hundred. This week, there are a bunch of PTF patches for the core IBM i releases that are still supported by Big Blue, but no security vulnerabilities that we could find and no weird things, either. Go figure.

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

  PTF Groups 7.5:

  • Memo to Users
  • RPG Café
  • PowerHA Tools for IBM i

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• IBM Hikes Hardware, Software, And Services Prices

  November 4, 2024 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Inflation might be somewhat tamed in the major economies of the world, but the price increases keep coming from Big Blue as it tries to balance out its costs and its need to profit to drive the stock that provides the real compensation for top executives against customers who are getting pretty sick of price increases in every aspect of their business and personal lives.

  We saw a price increase hit our emails, as did other IBM i shops, on October 29 last week, but if you look at announcement letter AD24-2249, it was dated September 3, 2024. Go …

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• Thoroughly Modern: The Business Case For Success And ROI With Enterprise AI On IBM i

  November 4, 2024 Monica Sanchez

  AI is the new frontier for all organizations, and those running IBM i are no exception – but how will you move AI from buzzword to business case to stand up to the boardroom test?

  To gain executive buy-in, a business case for AI must go beyond ideas. Executives need proof that AI will deliver business value and that the strategy includes a clear roadmap for AI adoption, scalability, and risk management.

  With the right approach, AI can enhance IBM i’s capabilities, from cost savings to new revenue streams. A strong business case – rooted in solid ROI, strategic …

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• Power10 Keeps Plugging Along As Power11 Looms For 2025

  November 4, 2024 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Considering how late we are in the Power10 and System z16 product cycles, things went pretty well for IBM in the respective Power Systems and System z businesses in the third quarter of 2024. While customers always look forward to future price/performance enhancements that come with a product refresh, there doesn’t seem to be anything out of the ordinary when it comes to a slowdown in sales ahead of next year’s Power11 and “Telum-II” System z17 launches.

  Business seems to be going pretty well for Big Blue, all things considered, although it had to pump $2.73 billion into its pension …

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• As I See It: The Tells

  November 4, 2024 Victor Rozek

  In its early incarnations, AI-generated media was often easy to spot: groups of the same people appearing multiple times in a crowd scene; multi-directional light sources in outdoor settings; mouths moving out-of-sync with the words being spoken; people whose anatomy mysteriously sprouted extra fingers or additional limbs.

  But things quickly improved to the point that deepfake images and manipulated video are no longer obvious constructions. Misinformation from both domestic and foreign sources is now rampant on the Internet, especially during the election cycle and, at a glance, it’s difficult to know if what we’re seeing is real.

  Which is why …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 26, Number 42

  November 4, 2024 Doug Bidwell

  Welcome to this week’s edition of the IBM i PTF Guide. Just a note of explanation to start off. In the Defective PTF section below, we only show you the first one for each release. Often there are more than one. If there is a new one that you haven’t encountered before, please follow the link in the Guide (for your release level) to get the complete list of defectives. And please review the special instructions – things sometimes become more complex the deeper you dig, especially with defectives.

  Now, here is a bug for you in PowerHA. Some …

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