Timothy Prickett Morgan
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Why Big Blue Is Simplifying The IBM i LPP Stack
October 23, 2023 Timothy Prickett Morgan
If only the paranoid survive, as legendary Intel co-founder Andy Grove once quipped, then we all would pretty much have to be paranoid pretty much all the time. And this, obviously, would not be healthy. But as legendary founder of The Four Hundred, the irreplaceable and irascible Hesh Wiener, once quipped, sometimes they really are out to get you.
And so, we come to IBM’s recent “come to Bezos” moment starting late last year that it was going to be providing subscription pricing for hardware and systems software for the IBM i platform running on Power Systems. We fully …
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So You Wanna Take Another IBM i Survey, Right?
October 23, 2023 Timothy Prickett Morgan
It is hard to believe that it has been a decade since the IBM i Marketplace Survey was conceived of by the late Dan Burger of IT Jungle and Tom Huntington of HelpSystems, now known as Fortra.
As you might imagine, we miss Dan every day, and we are committed to the mission that he had to better understand what is going on in the IBM i base. Time is running out for you to participate and have your voice heard and your IBM i shop is counted. Please take a moment and take the survey, which you can do …
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How Are You Doing, And What Are You Doing?
October 18, 2023 Timothy Prickett Morgan
The IBM i Marketplace Survey is still open, and it is time for you to take a moment and let us know what is going on in your IBM i shop.
The annual survey, which is in its tenth year now, and its accompanying report and the webinar that goes over the results of the survey, are an invaluable resource for the IBM i community. This is particularly true since IDC, Gartner, Forrester, and the other IT market researchers and consultancies have long since stopped tracking Power Systems in any kind of detail and certainly don’t spend a lot of …
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Power10 Systems Get Storage And I/O Enhancements
October 16, 2023 Timothy Prickett Morgan
There is a spring-fall cadence to the Power Systems platform from IBM, and so when the second batch if Technology Refreshes come around this time of year, we expect to see some hardware updates, too.
In recent years, we have been hoping – as always – that there would be a Power8+ or Power9+ processor enhancement around halfway through those processor family cycles, because that usually provides a price/performance kicker. But this has not happened during this generation as it did with the Power4+, Power5+, Power6+, and Power7+ generations. And we intend to put the pressure on IBM for a …
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Please Take The IBM i Marketplace Survey
October 16, 2023 Timothy Prickett Morgan
Can you believe it? This is the tenth year that Fortra, formerly known as HelpSystems, is taking a survey of the IBM i customers base so it can put together a report to tell us what is going on in the community surrounding the platform that we are all depending upon in some fashion.
The IBM i Marketplace Survey and its accompanying report and the webinar that goes over the results of the survey, which are both presented each February, are an invaluable resource for the IBM i community. This is particularly so since IDC, Gartner, Forrester, and the other …
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The Science Of Lifting And Shifting To The Cloud
October 11, 2023 Timothy Prickett Morgan
Companies in Japan have a long and deep history with IBM computing systems, both its mainframe and its midrange platforms. And in some cases, they have moved from one to the other to maintain the IBM style of integrated systems while attaining the benefits of what many customers still consider the more integrated, less expensive, and easier to use platform that Big Blue offers: Namely, the AS/400 launched in 1988 and its progeny up through the current IBM i generation.
Such is the case with Kosei Securities Co Ltd, which was founded way back in 1961 in Osaka, a …
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IBM Suddenly Pulls The Plug On Db2 Web Query for i
October 11, 2023 Timothy Prickett Morgan
Well, that was a bit of a surprise, but to be fair we had a few days of forewarning about it before it happened so it really wasn’t. Yesterday, on October 10, IBM abruptly announced the end of marketing for all variations of the Db2 Web Query for i data analytics tool. You can read about it in announcement letter AD23-0691. But don’t get too excited. That announcement letter doesn’t tell you much.
On Friday, October 6, we got a message from a director of information technology at a logistics and business services provider that his IBM business partner …
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How Many Programmers Does The US Economy Need?
October 9, 2023 Timothy Prickett Morgan
Throughout history, we strongly suspect that people always thought they lived in peculiar times. The difference is, we say with tongue firmly in cheek but also with a raised eyebrow and a pensive look, that we really do live in peculiar times. The others before us just thought they did.
Take the IT job market, for instance. Or leave it. Never before has information technology been so instrumental to the conduct of business as well as our lives outside of work. And never before has there been a force like generative AI that can put downward pressure on wages and …
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This Is Your IBM i Market, And Therefore Your Annual Survey
October 4, 2023 Timothy Prickett Morgan
It has been a decade since the IBM i Marketplace Survey was conceived of by the late Dan Burger of IT Jungle and Tom Huntington of HelpSystems, now known as Fortra. We miss Dan a lot, and you don’t want to miss a chance to help the community better understand itself, which is what all of us at IT Jungle and at Fortra really are after as we ask you, once again, to take the survey.
We are coming into the home stretch of the 10th annual IBM i Marketplace Survey. That means time is running out for you …
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40 Years Of DB2, But Even More For That No-Name Database Embedded In The System/38
October 2, 2023 Timothy Prickett Morgan
Last week, Big Blue celebrated the 40th anniversary of the launch of its Database 2 relational database management system for its venerable System/370, System 308X, and System/390 mainframes. It is now called Db2, because marketing people can’t leave anything alone, and even though we now have this thing called Db2 for i, IBM didn’t mention this red-headed stepchild of a relational database as part of its celebration.
Not even once. And that’s just fine by us because the integrated relational database management system that has been the heart of our venerable System/38 and its progeny was never DB2/400 or …
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