• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 26, Number 15

  April 15, 2024 Doug Bidwell

  Hey, this is interesting. We have no security vulnerabilities to report on this week for the IBM i platform. And this is also interesting. There is a new version of Access Client Solutions, called V1.1.9.5. We will be putting together a news story to talk about this, but in the meantime, we thought you should know that it is out. There ain’t a lot else going on, as you will see.

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

  PTF Groups 7.5:

  • IBM i Access Client Solutions V1.1.9.5
  • QMGTOOLS

  PTF Groups 7.4: …

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• Visualizing the Business Apps Used In the IBM i Marketplace

  April 10, 2024 Alex Woodie

  IBM i shops run an incredibly diverse array of software, including open source programs, packaged applications, and homegrown software. When it comes to business applications, data from the last nine State of IBM i Marketplace Surveys from Fortra helps to tell the tale.

  The IBM i platform was born to run applications. It’s right there in the original name, after all: Application System/400. Software vendors flocked to support the AS/400 following its launch in 1988, and while there has been some attrition over the years, there remains a strong core of vendors developing and supporting applications running on the platform. …

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• Avatier Bolsters Self-Service Password Reset with MFA

  April 10, 2024 Alex Woodie

  Self-service password reset cuts both ways. On one hand, users want convenient ways to reset passwords they invariably will forget. On the other, events like the recent MGM cyberattack show that more thorough user authentication is required. The folks at identity management solution provider Avatier think they have come up with a novel way to satisfy both camps – without getting cut in the process.

  You might not have heard about Avatier, but the Pleasanton, California, has been quietly serving the single sign-on (SSO) and identity management needs of IBM i shops for the past 24 years. It’s integrated …

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• ZendHQ Now Runs Fully on IBM i

  April 10, 2024 Alex Woodie

  IBM i shops running the ZendPHP distribution of the open source programming language and runtime will be interested to know that Perforce Software recently added full support for IBM i with ZendHQ, the extension for ZendPHP that provides observability and orchestration functionality for PHP-based applications. Previously, IBM i shops had to run part of ZendHQ on Linux or Windows.

  Perforce Software originally launched ZendHQ back in June 2022 to give ZendPHP customers more visibility and control of their increasingly complex PHP environments. ZendHQ is a superset of functionality that bundles existing tools that were originally developed for Zend Server customers, …

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• Four Hundred Monitor, April 10

  April 10, 2024 Jenny Thomas

  East Coast residents in the U.S. were all shook up last week after a 4.8-magnitude earthquake centered near Lebanon, New Jersey. The tremor was felt as far away as Baltimore and the Massachusetts-New Hampshire border. Thankfully, no life-threatening injuries or major damage were reported, and that includes all the machines in IBM’s Poughkeepsie facility, as you can read about in our Top Story below. This natural near-catastrophe is a good reminder that physically securing your machines is just as important as the data inside them. We’ve got some more industry news and events for you to catch up on below, …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 26, Number 14

  April 10, 2024 Doug Bidwell

  As we continue to “play ketchup” after the Easter holiday and have two issues of the IBM i PTF Guide this week, three is the actual magic number as we once again have three security vulnerabilities and an oddity that we became aware of over the weekend for the IBM i software stack. We will start with the security holes, as we always do.

  First, we have Security Bulletin: IBM WebSphere Application Server could provide weaker than expected security (CVE-2023-50313), which you can find out more about at this link. The affected versions include WebSphere Application Server 8.5 and …

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• Details On The IBM i Subscription Conversion Deals For P05 And P10 Tiers

  April 8, 2024 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  As you are well aware by now, Big Blue is in the middle of changing from perpetual licensing plus Software Maintenance for the IBM i stack to subscription pricing that includes licensing and tech support for the software all in one annual subscription. And this is happening at the same time that IBM has raised software prices and maintenance prices for that software across the board, which we will report on separately, and the company has said that it will withdraw new perpetual software license software sales for IBM i on its Power Systems line on May 27.

  That withdrawal …

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• Thoroughly Modern: Proceed With Caution With AI In The Landscape Of Cybersecurity

  April 8, 2024 Pauline Brazil Ayala

  In the fast-evolving realm of technological innovation, AI has emerged as one of the most compelling yet controversial advancements. Its potential spans industries, revolutionizing not only how data is processed but also how ideas are conceived.

  A recent study by PEW Research indicates that almost a quarter of employed Americans aged 30 to 49 have used ChatGPT for work, up from 8 percent last year. Its allure lies in automation; augmenting tasks like writing contracts and analyzing data with speed and efficiency that far surpass human limitations.

  However, with innovation comes the need for vigilance – particularly in the realm …

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• IBM Hardware, Software, And Support Prices Hiked

  April 8, 2024 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Last fall/summer we caught wind of the fact that IBM was going to raise prices on hardware and software effective this year, and then we never saw the announcement letter from Big Blue on General Price Harmonization or the one on price increases relating specifically to Power Systems and IBM i.

  As it turns out, those announcements were made on September 1 last year and they went into effect on January 1 – something that was not apparent to us (or the business partners that we talk to from time to time) until we were reviewing the subscription pricing deal …

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• Precisely Streams IBM i Data Into Amazon’s New Db2 Service

  April 8, 2024 Alex Woodie

  Amid the torrent of news that Amazon Web Services unveiled at its re:Invent show four months ago was RDS for Db2, a new hosted relational data service based on IBM’s database. Amazon Web Services offers the Linux, Unix, and Windows (LUW) variant of Db2, but thanks to a new connector unveiled by Precisely last week, IBM i and mainframe shops have a way to replicate their data into it.

  Amazon RDS is among the cloud giant’s most popular services, and likely one of the most popular IT services ever created. According to one estimate, Amazon RDS brings in $7 billion …

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