• Oh, Ruby! What You Do To Me (On Rails)

  October 14, 2013 Dan Burger

  Why would an RPG programmer have any interest in a language called Ruby and an architectural framework called Rails? I dunno. Why does anyone go where he or she has never been before? Because it sounds like fun, appeals to a sense of adventure, and holds some degree of promise (like Web programming, for instance)? If you haven’t stopped for a look at Ruby on Rails, there’s no better time than the present. Why now? For one reason, because IBM just announced support for Ruby as part of the Technology Refresh 7 for IBM i. Ruby is on the

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• Big Data Gets Easier to Handle With IBM i TR7

  October 14, 2013 Alex Woodie

  IBM i shops are struggling to adapt to big data, just like organizations that use other types of servers to store their data. Whether it is email messages, social media posts, or a sequential list of invoices dating back to 1978, you will find it squirreled away inside of some DB2 for i database, somewhere. Keeping up with the growing volume of data sets should be easier as a result of the enhancements IBM will deliver next month with IBM i 7.1 Technology Refresh 7 (TR7). The IBMers in Rochester refer to the really big databases using the acronym VLDB,

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• Mad Dog 21/21: Watson, Come Here, I Want To See You

  October 14, 2013 Hesh Wiener

  Verizon is an $80 billion business growing that will grow to $85 billion, maybe more, next year. That makes it (in revenue) about 75 percent the size of IBM, 77 percent the size of Hewlett-Packard, twice the size of Google, half the size of Apple, a little bigger than Microsoft and about 25 percent larger than Amazon. So when Verizon says it wants to be a major player in computer services, its competitors have to pay attention. So, too, must present and prospective customers, because Verizon doesn’t only want to be bigger. It wants to

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• IBM Training: The New Plan Advances

  October 14, 2013 Dan Burger

  IBM‘s goal is to triple the number of people that are touched by its training and education programs between now and the end of 2015. That sounds pretty ambitious, but part of IBM’s plan is already in place. Big Blue is transitioning its T&E program to four business partners with the goals of increasing penetration into regions it has never been and adding convenience in major markets. The Global Skills Initiative, as this education and training move from IBM to the business partners is called, got under way in July when it was rolled out in 10 countries: Canada,

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• Power Enterprise Pools Make CPU Activations Mobile

  October 14, 2013 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  As part of the October Power Systems announcements, IBM is allowing for core activations to move easily across a group of machines. This new feature, called Power Enterprise Pools, is only aimed at high-end machines, but a credible argument can be made that it should be available on all Power-based systems. IBM has allowed for customers with multiple big Power Systems machines to work with its tech support organization to allow for processor activations to be transferred from one box to another with a complex manual process, Steve Sibley, director of worldwide product management for IBM’s Power Systems, explains. But

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• looksoftware’s iBelieve Event Tours Europe

  October 14, 2013 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Application modernization software maker looksoftware is taking its iBelieve show on the road, and this time it is doing a five-city tour of Europe to promote the IBM i platform and the applications that run on it. The company has held numerous iBelieve events in the United States and Australia and wants to keep the momentum going by pushing into Europe. Frank Soltis, the former chief scientist for the AS/400, iSeries, and System i platforms, will be on hand at the iBelieve events to talk about the Power Systems-IBM i platform and its future. Industry gadfly and good guy Trevor

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• COMMON Presentations Deadline Approaches; Scholarship Sponsorships Sought

  October 14, 2013 Dan Burger

  Preparations for the 2014 COMMON Annual Meeting & Exposition are a year-round activity, but one of the most important deadlines–the call for presentations–is coming up in just 16 days on October 30. COMMON’s education team is searching for sessions, labs, and all-day workshops related to IBM Power Systems, IBM i, AIX, and Linux. Of particular interest are show-and-tell sessions designed so attendees experience a narrowly defined task from start to finish in step-by-step fashion. The use of live demonstrations or extensive screen shots is expected. The education team also has a priority to add new sessions on AIX, Linux, mobile

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• IBM Is Winding Down Sales Of More Power7 Machines

  October 14, 2013 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  With the Power7+ processors in full swing and the Power8 chips around the corner in 2014, it will come as no surprise to anyone that Big Blue wants to start winding down sales of Power7 processors. The Power7 chips, which made their debut in February 2010 and which were gradually rolled out into the Power Systems line that year, are still both technically viable and, provided you get a good price for a system using one, are also economically viable. That said, the way per-core IBM i pricing works, it always makes more sense to have the fastest processor possible

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• The Digital Industrial Economy To Shake Up The IT Biz

  October 14, 2013 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  The wizards at Gartner held their annual Symposium/ITExpo extravaganza last week in Orlando, Florida, and as usual, the whitebeards in the pointy hats are trying to get CIOs excited about their prognostications. First and foremost. Peter Sondergaard, a senior vice president at Gartner and global head of research at the company, assured everyone that the global IT market would grow by 3.6 percent to $3.8 trillion. But this, apparently is not where the action is. The “Internet of Things” as analysts and vendors are starting to call it, is what is really hot, according to Sondergaard. The basic gist of

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• RPG, Database Top Enhancements In IBM i 7.1 Technology Release 7

  October 7, 2013 Dan Burger

  IBM i Technology Refresh 7 is bound to make some people bark. Any time you mention these three letters–RPG–the ears of the IBM midrange community perk up like a half sleeping dog that notices a cat cutting across his territory. And RPG is going to get some attention as people hear about TR7, which officially will be released tomorrow, October 8. This all begins, simply enough, with new free format options being added to RPG IV. RPG free-form was introduced with i5/OS V5R4 in 2001. That’s more than 12 years ago. During that time IBM made free form its RPG

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