Veteran RPG coders around the world are getting in a free format frame of mind in anticipation of the launch of IBM i 7.1 TR7 next month. While getting experienced RPG programmers to write more modern looking syntax is great, the real promise of free format RPG is the potential to get more people–particularly younger coders, but not necessarily students–interested in RPG. The big question is: Will it work?

The IBM i platform could definitely use an RPG-shaped shot in the arm, because the pool of experienced RPG programmers is shrinking every year. Whether it’s shrinking as fast as the

IBM is building an IBM i-based cloud. You could say it’s already built, but it is an ongoing project. As good as the cloud services for IBM i are, there’s always work to be done to make it better. Taking a step in that direction, IBM hosted the IBM i Cloud Summit earlier this month to bring together a group of managed service providers (MSPs), independent software vendors (ISVs), and business partners who are all, along with IBM, the stakeholders in the i cloud.

The fact that there even is an IBM i Cloud Summit is an indication that this

What happens–or doesn’t happen–in China has a much larger effect on IBM i shops in the rest of the world than perhaps any of us might have anticipated. The return to profitability for IBM‘s Systems and Technology Group in the second quarter was short-lived and the group was pushed into a loss in the third quarter by a freeze on spending in China. Economic growth in the Middle Kingdom is the weakest it has been since 2000, and the government of President Xi Jinping has been working since May to put together reforms and a stimulus package. Those reforms

Economic activity is notoriously difficult to predict because it depends on the daily decisions of millions of individuals who themselves are difficult to predict. Behavior can often be capricious, and the money guys who manipulate markets are even more uncomfortable with uncertainty than a nun opening an attachment from Carlos Danger. Consequently, any time the needle moves in the wrong direction, hand wringing and consternation are sure to follow.

So when Gartner reported that IT spending would fall $74 billion below predictions, the sky wasn’t exactly falling, but it teetered ominously. Granted, $74 billion is not pocket change, but the

A week after IBM i Technology Refresh 7 was announced, Alison Butterill, product offering manager for IBM i, showed up at the OCEAN user group meeting with plenty to talk about. Butterill, who travels like the wind except the wind has trouble keeping up, was asking a group of IBM midrange executives, in a roundtable discussion with software vendors, how many knew about TR7. Very few acknowledgements were signaled.

That led to a question about how many in this group were running IBM i 7.1 on Power Systems. Again, very little response in the affirmative. How about 6.1? The

Cunning, scheming, and unscrupulous, especially in politics or advancing one’s career. These aren’t the skills you’d expect to see listed on the average resume, but if you’re looking to rise to the top, especially if you’re gunning for a CIO spot, maybe they should be.

A new e-book from Gartner vice president and fellow, Tina Nunno, takes a look at some new leadership styles for CIOs and IT leaders that can help ensure their own success and that of their teams.

The Wolf in CIO’s Clothing: A Machiavellian Strategy for Successful IT Leadership examines the role of CIOs, who are

The ramp of IBM‘s PureSystems converged machines continues apace, with the company growing its installed base of unique systems by 25 percent in the third quarter ended in September.

“PureSystems continues to gain momentum,” said Mark Loughridge, IBM’s chief financial officer, on a call with Wall Street analysts going over the third quarter financial result for IBM. “In the major markets, we grew more than 30 percent sequentially. Globally, we shipped over 2,000 systems in third quarter, with over 8,000 total shipments since announcement.”

Depending on who I ask, and when I ask them, a PureSystems system is a

As part of the October Power Systems announcements, IBM put out a new tool called PowerVC, which is short for Virtualization Center and which is a new management tool to set up and manage virtual machines on top of the PowerVM hypervisor.

Earlier this year, IBM committed to porting the KVM hypervisor to Power processors and also making the OpenStack cloud controller work in conjunction with the Power Systems, and PowerVC is one of several new products that are coming to market based on these efforts.

In announcement letter 213-409, you will see that what IBM has done is

Applications and solutions were the focal point of IBM when Tony Madden began his career. As he grew up, professionally speaking, his best friend was the AS/400. After 20-plus years with IBM helping to establish the AS/400 and later the iSeries as the quintessential midrange computer, Madden joined Avnet, where he is currently the partner representative, the conduit, between Avnet and IBM on a global basis. Avnet is IBM’s number one distributor and IBM is Avnet’s number one supplier. Together they put IBM products in more than 30 countries.

When IT gurus and industry pundits talk about the new

It isn’t just vendors that are talking about integrated systems that converge servers, networking, and storage into a single system. It looks like customers are doing some buying, too.

According to the latest market research by IDC, sales of integrated infrastructure platforms like IBM’s PureSystems machines drove $1.32 billion in revenues in the second quarter, up 50.2 percent from the year-ago period. IDC has just started tracking sales of integrated infrastructure and integrated platform sales, the latter having a higher software component and usually being tuned for specific workloads. In the IBM lineup, the former is technically called a