The world turns, time marches on, and versions and releases of operating systems come and go. Big Blue put out the IBM i 7.2 software release concurrent with the Power8 “scale-out” systems launch at the end of April, an update to the integrated software stack that was tuned to take advantage of the new hardware. In with the new, out with the old, and that means IBM i 6.1 customers better get prepared to do an upgrade or find budget to pay for extended support contracts for the software.

In announcement letter 914-181, IBM is warning customers that it

There are many IBM midrange shops that recognize the value of investing in and implementing the new capabilities in the IBM i operating system. Sometimes we lose sight of that because there’s no tidal wave of OS upgrades on the heels of major new releases. There never has been. It’s more like the steady flow of a river, which looks calm on the surface and belies the activity that goes unseen.

You can get a glimpse of that by talking with someone like Pete Massiello. His company, iTech Solutions Group, is on schedule to do 150 IBM i OS

It looks like you should pencil in the first week of October for some pretty big Power Systems announcements from IBM. We know that IBM has planned to get some additional Power Systems machines in the field before the end of the year, and it is looking like the big event will be at the Enterprise2014 conference that Big Blue is hosting in Las Vegas.

Enterprise2014 is the third big event that IBM is putting on in Vegas this year, and the theme of the conference is “the infrastructure for cloud, data, and engagement.” That pretty much covers everything

Generally speaking, war is a male pursuit. Women warriors, Amazons, are an exception. Generally speaking, public company capitalism is about profit, with emphasis on near term earnings. Amazon.com, taking the long view while favoring revenue, is an exception. The Amazon women’s tribe mythology is huge, and it is consistent with the findings of archeologists; they say that dramatically matriarchal societies are threads in the fabric of European civilization. Amazon.com exhibits unusual behavior, too; it succeeds far beyond the expectations of skeptics, confounding and punishing gainsayers who put bearish money where their grousing pie-holes lie.

Amazon: Ancient Greeks spun fabulous myths

The companies that make up the Linear Tape Open consortium last week announced the ninth and tenth generations of the open standard. When the first drives based on LTO Gen 10 technology start shipping–ostensibly around the year 2020, if the historical release pace holds up–the drives will be able to write data at the rate of more than 1 GB per second and hold more than 120 TB on each cartridge.

The current LTO Gen 6 drives started hitting the market in late 2012, about 24 months after the LTO Gen 5 drives appeared. They offer a native capacity of

The capability to convert fixed form RPG to free form RPG is one of the most far-reaching enhancements to the IBM i operating system. Last week, two members of the IBM i ISV community formed a partnership that could benefit organizations that are ready to take advantage of this feature, which was introduced with IBM i 7.1 TR7. The software change management company Remain Software and the RPG modernization firm Linoma Software are combining efforts to ease the migration of RPG applications to free-format, a process that is considered a wise investment in legacy IBM i assets.

Linoma’s RPG Toolbox

Volunteering has a much larger impact on your community than most people think. And if you narrow that down to the IBM midrange community, the same is true: The impact of volunteers is both underestimated and underappreciated.

There is an economic impact that adds a financial spark to the IBM i platform by creating and organizing advocates who are also helping themselves professionally through networking, education, and mentoring. There is a personal feeling of being connected and giving back to the community and keeping it strong. And then there are social benefits that are tied into all of the above.

I was surprised to hear that companies are increasingly inclined to invest in internal IT operations, including hiring more permanent staff, than to outsource tasks to off-premise providers. This information comes in the form of a survey and study conducted by Computer Economics, a company well known for its analysis of the IT industry. When comparing outsourcing as a percentage of IT budgets, 2014 shows a lower percentage than any of the past five years. Spending on outsourcing is averaging 10.2 percent of total IT spending this year. That’s a slim decline from 10.6 percent in 2013 and a

Apple’s big launch last week delivered the expected goodies, including the new Apple Watch and Apple Pay. But there was also something missing–namely, the letter “i.” The company is dropping the “i” from new products as part of CEO Tim Cook’s strategy to begin a new era for the company. But will the move give IBM the headroom it needs to finally begin heavily marketing its venerable IBM i platform before it’s too late?

The “i” has been a staple of Apple products since it launched iTunes and iPod in 2001. The ninth letter was heavily featured in Apple’s 2007

A deal that IBM created for its Power Systems customers and software partners earlier this year for its Europe, Middle East, and Africa region has been extended to include new Power8 iron.

The original deal came out in January, and it is called the 2014 Power ISV Solution Connection Program. As the name suggests, it gives business partner and system integrator companies rebates that range from $500 to $3,000 if they work with application software providers to close deals running on Power Systems iron. The deal was updated in announcement letter ZA14-1004, and it gives bigger rebates to