Not only is i5/OS V5R4 a rugged operating system in terms of its stability and reliability, but it is also one of the most long-lived operating systems in the history of computing. While regular Software Maintenance (SWMA) support for V5R4 expires on September 30 this year, IBM has, as promised, announced an extended SWMA support offering for V5R4 for customers who cannot, for whatever reason, get onto a newer IBM i 6.1 or 7.1 release by the end of September.

In announcement letter 613-004, IBM introduced Service Extension for i5/OS V5R4, offers Software Maintenance support starting on October 1,

Infor let its customers and competitors know that it means business at the Inforum 2013 conference in Orlando, Florida. At the show, the privately held company highlighted its impressive growth, demonstrated the new products it shipped since last year’s show, and set a high bar with a new line of offerings that ranges from the new consumer-grade SoHo user interface and Twitter-like Ming.le feed, to new cloud offerings with IBM and Amazon‘s RedShift, and another IBM i product acquisition, just for good measure.

On the stage at the Inforum 2013 opening session on April 23, the Infor brain trust

Ginni Rometty is not cleaning house after a particularly unprofitable–and surprisingly so–first quarter for its Systems and Technology Group. But just after The Four Hundred went on hiatus at the end of April, IBM‘s CEO and chairman announced that she was swapping the roles of two executives who are long familiar to the OS/400 and IBM i community.

The executives who are swapping desks are Rod Adkins, who has been running Systems and Technology Group for the past couple of years, and Tom Rosamilia, who used to work for Adkins as general manager of the System z business and

Ginni Rometty has to think or quit. And I don’t expect her to quit. IBM‘s revenue peaked in 2011, the year Rometty became the company’s president, replacing Sam Palmisano. While she wasn’t the boss when Big Blue’s all defining policies were put into place, Rometty had been a top executive since 2009 and an IBM employee since 1991. So, while only recently at the tiller, she could hardly be surprised at the company’s course. It is doubtful, however, that she anticipated the consequences of IBM’s strategic decisions, including her own, or the harshness of the prolonged economic winter.

Now

The idea of using a storage area network to increase storage capacity utilization has not exactly set the IBM i world on fire, but stringing together multiple servers and consolidating the storage space of each is finding its way into more IBM midrange shops than you might realize.

I recently spoke with a couple of storage experts who believe SAN awareness is on the rise. The first is Ed Ahl, director of IBM business for Tributary Systems, a developer of storage virtualization software for IBM i and mainframe environments. The second is Tom Grigoleit, systems engineer at Meridian Group

If you have a bone to pick with IBM or just a helpful suggestion on how it might improve the Power Systems platform running the IBM i operating systems, now is your chance to do something about it.

For the past seven years, COMMON Europe has done its part to poll the IBM i user base and try to figure out what they are worried about. And now the eighth annual Top Concerns survey is open for you to speak your mind and help shape the future of this platform upon which we all make our livings. (Or at least

What can an electronic data interchange (EDI) software company tell you about the IBM i installed base? EXTOL International has 500 IBM midrange shops using its software that range from $25 million a year small to midsize businesses up to $21 billion a year enterprises. Each year it adds about two dozen new customers running its software on IBM i on Power Systems. EXTOL’s software does not run exclusively on IBM i, but the platform is an important aspect of the company’s business.

Electronic data interchange allows the computer systems and networks of business partners to transfer data–typically related to

The first three months of 2013 were choppy for a lot of IT suppliers and distributors, and the situation was no different for master electronics components and IT distributor Avnet. The box pusher saw a bit of a budget flush in the fourth quarter of 2012, which was the second quarter of its fiscal 2013 year, but no such luck this time around with the U.S. government unsure of what it is going to spend once we get put beyond September this year and general skittishness in China and parts of Europe.

In the quarter ended March 30, Avnet’s

If you’re an IBM shareholder in need of some fast cash, we have some good news for you. IBM announced it has boosted its dividend 12 percent and approved $5 billion in stock buybacks at its annual meeting last week. The dividend of 95 cents a share will be payable on June 10 to shareholders of record on May 10. With the approval of the additional funds, IBM now has $11.2 billion in its repurchase program, which is enough to repurchase about 5.6 percent of its overall share count on Wall Street.

Whether or not this is good news for

Each summer, IBM midrange shops in Southern California mark the date on their calendars when the OCEAN User Group Tech Conference will be held. This year it is on Friday, July 19. For some shops, this training and education opportunity is exactly what’s needed: convenient and cost effective.

This year there are a total of six educational tracks and 30 sessions that include topics such as: power programming, Web programming, mobile and Web applications, infrastructure, SQL and DB2, IBM i modernization, and new technology. The subject matter experts who are leading these sessions are among the best and brightest in