2024: An IBM i Year In Review
December 4, 2024 Alex Woodie
It’s hard to believe that yet another year is coming to a close. As 2024 rolls to its merciful end, it’s time for us to take stock of the major events and announcements that impacted the IBM i community.
January
News broke in late January that revenue in IBM’s Power Systems business grew for the second year in a row in 2023. TPM’s model showed $1.53 billion in external Power Systems sales for the year, which was a hair above the 2022 figure, which was a hair above the 2021 figure. It’s not 2010-era numbers, when the figure was north of $5 billion. But any growth at this point is welcome news.
Bob Langieri, the Southern California IBM i recruiter who keeps his eyes on midrange salaries, didn’t have grew news for us in January. “IBM i salaries still pale compared to other more popular platforms and skills,” Langieri wrote in an IT Jungle column in January. IBM i types are encouraged to continue investing in additional skills to keep their take-home climbing. To really get the big bucks, cybersecurity and forensics are where it’s at, he advised.
IBM embarked on its big subscription push for the IBM i stack in mid-2023, but instead of taking the big bang approach, it rolled out the new changes in piecemeal fashion. In early 2024, IBM detailed how the BRMS and IBM Cloud Storage offerings would look through the subscription lens.
February
Every year, IT Jungle works with Fortra and IBM to put together the IBM i Marketplace Study, which remains the best measure of key aspects of the IBM i community. The 2024 edition of the survey came out this month, providing a large amount of data that we started pouring through over the weeks to come.
A funny thing happened with Fortra’s 2024 IBM i Marketplace study: a record high number of IBM i shops said they were concerned about security, but few seem to be actually doing anything about it. When it comes to security, IBM i shops seem to recognize the dangers, but a smaller number of shops reported taking the necessary actions–such as implementing audit and compliance, secure MFT, MFA, and database encryption–that can lower security exposures.
As the generative AI wave continues to crash over us, IBM i shops are starting to take notice. However, according to a survey by Fortra, IBM i shops are mostly still in a “wait and see” mode. The company found that 79 percent of IBM i users are “still creating or not yet started a GenAI strategy,” according to a survey. Time’s a wasting, folks.
March
As previously stated, IBM began its big subscription rollout in 2023. And while it pulled the veil up on some aspects of its plan, it kept the community in the dark on other important parts, such as the date that the switchover will happen, particularly for the profitable P20 and P30 tiers. Finally on March 12, IBM made an announcement that clarified some of the confusion about IBM i subscriptions.
Big Blue debuted a new Solution Edition for Healthcare that’s aimed at hospitals that run case management software on IBM i. The offering nets the customer a Power10 machine with up to 48 cores at a price point that’s substantially lower than what it was offering before.
In early 2024, IBM i shops were still in shock about the sudden death of Db2 Web Query that took place in October 2023. The culprit, alas, was a large increase in fees requested by TIBCO, which owned the core Information Builders WebFOCUS product upon which Db2 Web Query was based. We scoured the market identify possible replacements, including plans from TIBCO to onboard Db2 Web Query customers.
April
It can be tough to decipher IBM’s encoding sometimes, but we do our best. And while we would have liked to have gotten you this news sooner, it turns out that IBM did, in fact, follow through on the price hikes that it promised back in 2023. The company is eager to move customers to subscriptions, and 6 percent price hikes on hardware, software, and support is a good way to do it.
Overseas cybercriminal groups are ramping up attacks on American infrastructure, including drinking water and wastewater systems, we learned from the U.S. Government. Considering that many local water districts rely on the IBM i server, this should serve as a wakeup call for them to bolster security before it’s too late.
We finally achieved more clarity on the subscription pricing that IBM wants to use with its IBM i software. There are a lot of factors that go into figuring out whether you should stick with perpetual pricing or go with the new subscription pricing, and TPM has a knack for digging up the pertinent details that help you make those decisions.
May
IBM made its Spring Technology Refresh (TR) announcement this month. IBM i 7.5 TR4 and 7.4 TR10 was the bigger of the two TRs this year, and brought a lot of new stuff, including Merlin 2.0, a new security data mart, as well as enhancements to the database, ACS, Navigator, and HA/DR software, among others.
In addition to discussing the recent Spring TRs, IBM announced it was developing an RPG co-pilot at COMMON’s POWERUp conference, which was held in Ft. Worth, Texas. IBM i CTO Steve Will talked at length about the project, and the need for more RPG samples upon which to train the new copilot. IBM executives clarified soon thereafter that IBM i shops should not mail their backup tapes to IBM.
Kisco Systems solidified its IBM i security bona fides with its acquisition of DXR Security. The deal is likely the last acquisition for Carol Woodbury, the onetime IBM security architect for OS/400, who has been working as an independent consultant for the past 20 years.
June
The good vibes from the 2024 POWERUp meeting carried over into June, as news broke that COMMON had exceeded 1,000 attendees for an annual conference for the first time in many years (final attendance was around 1,100). What’s even better was that COMMON appeared to have attracted a larger-than-usual percentage of people who are relatively youthful (i.e. not within 10 years of retirement).
Sixteen years is a long time to wait, but that’s how long it took Rocket Software to acquire the assets of what used to be NetManage, which includes the popular 5250 emulator RUMBA. Rocket got a whole lot more than just RUMBA in the $2.275 billion transaction for Micro Focus assets from OpenText, but the acquisition of RUMBA gives the company three 5250 emulators, in addition to Reflection (part of the Micro Focus deal) and its BlueZone emulator (part of its Seagull Software acquisition).
Few computer platforms live to be 20, but the IBM i celebrated its 36th birthday this month. It’s even older if you count back to 1983, when IBM launched the S/36, or back to 1978, when the S/38 was launched. If you’re into counting days, as TPM apparently is, then it’s 13,152. That’s a lot of days.
July
To train the RPG co-pilot that it’s developing, IBM needs a lot of sample RPG. The problem is that the vast majority of RPG in the world is owned by private entities. That’s why IBM put out the word last summer that it would be happy if IBM i customers would share just a little bit of their code.
A bad patch from yielded some concerned IBM i shops over the summer, as their cooling fans started to rev like the Indy 500. The patch, for firmware in Power10 systems running IBM i 7.4 and 7.5, was itself patched with another patch, and the reports of racing fans has died down.
IBM’s application and data integration capabilities expanded just a bit this month, as Big Blue completed its acquisitions of webMethods and its StreamSets subsidiary. IBM and Software AG owner Silver Lake made their original agreement in December 2023, and ultimately completed the deal for $ €2.13 billion, or $2.32 billion per the conversation rate at the time, in early July.
August
IBM i shops who were itching for bigger, faster memory cheered this month when IBM started shipping new DDR5 memory cards for Power10. The new DDR5 DDIMMs are twice as dense as their DDR4 predecessors, and come in capacities of 64 GB, 128 GB, 256 GB, and 512 GB for all of the machines, while the big dog Power E1080 gets an even fatter 1 TB memory card.
Remember the dream of a full IBM i subscription for a S1014 system at the bargain basement price of $50 per user per month? It was a deal that IBM had offered for a time, but it ceased being a thing this month when IBM killed it. Big Blue also stopped selling various PCI-Express adapters and NVM-Express flash cards and drives, as well as cables.
Soon, all that will be left of Fax/400 will be memories, as the product formally known as Facsimile Support for i was killed off over the summer. IBM recommended that any remaining Fax/400 users look to solutions from ISVs. There could be a number of them, as fax retains advantages over other communication mechanisms.
September
The slowdown in Power sales in China led IBM to begin the shutdown of two of its main development labs in the country. IBM started shutting down its China Development Lab (CDL) earlier in the year, and shut down its China Systems Lab (CSL) this month. Big Blue was mum on the details, but it’s suspected that the country’s desire to utilize homegrown technology is ultimately to blame.
It’s not every month that IBM release a new database driver for IBM i, but that was the case in September, when IBM released Mapepire. The open source client is designed to be faster, lighter weight, and easier for developers to work with compared to existing ODBC and JDBC database clients, especially in cloud environments, the company said.
IBM has been cleaning its IBM i closet of legacy products over the past couple of years, and the latest to get the axe is CICS. Predominantly a mainframe thing, IBM brought CICS transaction monitoring to the IBM i platform around the turn of the millennium as mainframe shops moved to other systems. There’s no direct replacement for CICS Transaction Server for i, but IBM did recommend a mysterious company called HiComp.
October
IBM caught us a little off guard when it unveiled the fall Tech Refresh early in the month. IBM i 7.5 TR5 and 7.4 TR11 brought the expected assortment of new SQL services and database enhancements, to go along with updates for ACS, Navigator, PowerHA, and Code for i.
IBM customers have been free to subscribe to Power gear in the cloud via the Power Virtual Server (PowerVS) offering. For customers who won’t want to use shared systems, IBM began running new PowerVS private pods this month. The PowerVS private pods can run the usual mix of IBM i, AIX, and Linux, and are available in different sizes.
A few weeks after the TR announcement, IBM made another surprise announcement: a new Migrate While Active offering for PowerVS and other Power clouds. The offering utilizes Db2 Mirror and PowerHA to replicate data from the on-prem system to the cloud system, but doesn’t require the expensive RoCE connection. More details will be forthcoming.
November and December
IBM started lifting the curtain on the new Power11 chips, which are due to start shipping in IBM systems in 2025. Bill Starke, distinguished engineer at Power Systems and the chief architect of the Power10 and Power11 processors, gave TPM the scoop on the new chips, which will be based on a nanometer process, in November. Stay tuned to IT Jungle next year for more info on the hot new chips.
We covered the new IBM price hikes this month. The good news is the entry-level Power10 machines didn’t get a price hike, while the Power E1050 midrange machine and the Power E1080 both will have a 6 percent increase on their base system price when the price hikes go into effect in 2025.
The month isn’t over, but our publishing schedule for the year is nearing its end. We thank you, dear reader, for hanging with us over the years, and for staying with us for 2024.
