• Power Systems Has A New Vice President Of Product Management

  January 13, 2025 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Throughout the history of IBM systems, there are executives who steer the development of hardware and those that steer the development of microcode, operating systems, and other software. Still others at Big Blue manage the processor roadmaps as well as the evolution of the systems that make use of them, including all of the peripherals that go into turning central processing units into systems.

  We have always liked these software and hardware people, as well as the multitudes who work with them and for them. They have given us valuable time and insight over the many decades that The Four …

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• 2025 IBM i Predictions, Part One

  January 13, 2025 Alex Woodie

  The new year is shaping up to be a big one for IBM i. A new release of the operating system is expected, as is a new processor and new servers built with them. Old utilities are slated to get the axe, but no one is quite sure how far IBM will cut. And then of course there’s what will happen in the IBM i community, which is where we turn for insight into what comes next.

  We start this year’s batch of IBM i predictions with Charlie Guarino, the president of Central Park Data Systems and the resident expert …

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• IBM Pulls Back The Covers On Migrate While Active

  January 13, 2025 Alex Woodie

  Last month, IBM began selling subscriptions to Migrate While Active, a new offering designed to speed and simplify the migrations of IBM i workloads from customers’ on-prem installations to Power Virtual Server running in IBM Cloud. Big Blue also last month hosted an online Guided Tour webinar that provided some much-needed answers to questions about the new offering.

  IBM launched the Migrate While Active in late October, a couple of weeks after unveiling the latest Technology Refreshes for IBM i 7.4 and 7.5. IBM didn’t provide a lot of initial information on the new offering, which was designed to …

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• IBM Announcement Roundup: A Little Bit Of Everything

  January 13, 2025 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Welcome to 2025, everybody. Nothing too big has happened on the IBM i front as far as we know, excepting the appointment of a new vice president for product management for the Power Systems line, which we report on elsewhere in this issue. But a lot of little thing have happened in recent weeks that bear pointing out, including a whole lot of patching that you can get caught up on in the IBM i PTF Guide also elsewhere in this issue.

  Let’s go through the IBM announcements relative to the Power Systems and IBM i customer base that we …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 26, Numbers 48 Through 50

  January 13, 2025 Doug Bidwell

  With The Four Hundred on hiatus for the holidays in late December and early January, we are playing catch up with editions of the IBM i PTF Guide. This week, we will close out 2024 with the final three editions put together in December.

  Let’s start with Volume 26, Number 48, which came out December 7. It starts with Security Bulletin: Vulnerability in IBM® Java SDK affect IBM WebSphere Application Server and IBM WebSphere Application Server Liberty due to October 2024 CPU, which you can learn more about here. The affected products include WebSphere Application Server 8.5 and …

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• IBM Boosts Prices Even Further Outside The United States

  December 9, 2024 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Back on November 4, we told you about a price increase that IBM instituted across its Power Systems, storage hardware and storage software, and Software Maintenance services. These price increases were supposedly announced on September 3, but IBM’s system did not notify us of them until October 29, and we told you about it in the subsequent edition of this newsletter. The delay didn’t matter much because the price changes are not effective until January 1, 2025.

  And now, the rest of the world is going to get an extra taste of inflation, as you will see in announcement letter …

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• Dell And Big Blue Call It Quits On Storage Driver Support For IBM i

  December 9, 2024 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  It looks like IBM and sometime rival Dell Technologies are having a tiff over the licensing of technology that allows disk arrays descended from the venerable Symmetrix arrays created by EMC more than three decades ago to link to descendants of the AS/400 platform and OS/400 operating systems created three and a half decades ago.

  The fallout from what we presume is that a technology licensing fee agreement between Dell and IBM is similar, we think, to the one between IBM and the company that owns Information Builders. In October 2023, out of the blue, IBM announced that it was …

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• How ERP Giants Are Building GenAI Into Their Products

  December 9, 2024 Alex Woodie

  We are still near the top of Gartner’s hype curve when it comes to generative AI. Larger companies that have discipline and money, and startups with time and ambition, are finding success with GenAI, but many organizations are still in the planning and roll-out phase. The same could be said for ERP vendors, who have started their GenAI journeys but are expected to ramp up adoption significantly in the years to come.

  Since the dawn of the mainframe age, computers have automated the work that was previously done by people. Large armies of file clerks were no longer needed once …

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• Happy Holidays From All Of Us To All Of You

  December 9, 2024 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Every year has its own twists, turns, and challenges for any company and for the people who comprise that company. Over the years, we have had our share of adversity. 2019 and 2020 and 2024 were tough years for us, and we are all frankly happy to have pushed through the to end of this one so we can hit reset and attack 2025 with the usual vim and vigor.

  No matter where you are, everybody gets their turn with adversity, and if hard times have come to you, we just want to know that we feel you. Do your …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 26, Number 47

  December 9, 2024 Doug Bidwell

  Just a reminder: For the first time in a long, long while there are pre-requisites for a Technology Refresh. Sorting out the contingencies will keep us busy for a while. Here’s the word from IBM: OSP-Technology Refresh : Prereq licensed internal code PTFs, which you can find out more about at this link. These are the pre-reqs for the Technology Refreshes:

  • IBM i 7.5: SJ02898
  • IBM i 7.4: SJ02897

  Now there is another issue you need to be aware of. Specifically: Potential to render new Feature Code EN24 / EN26 CCIN EC2A adapters inoperable, which you can find out …

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