• Where In The World Is IBM i?

  February 29, 2016 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  In case you did not notice it, there is a new year here in 2016 and Big Blue has spent what must have been a fortune putting a new mobile-tuned website together for itself. I am going to show my age a bit here, but mobile formats are fine for a phone, and on a web screen they might be slick and slippery, but they are also shouty and devoid of actual data. Call me a misplaced man of letters, but I like text. Just for the hell of it, I went poking around the new IBM website to see

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• The Job Market For The People Who Make The IBM i Go

  February 22, 2016 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Like you, we are trying to understand the current state of the IBM i community. Thus far in 2016, we have taken several looks at the dicing and slicing of the latest IBM i Marketplace Survey compiled by HelpSystems as well as providing our own insight into what industries are represented by the IBM i base and how that compares to historical data. We also did our best to try to case the distribution of system admins and programmers in the IBM i base. This week, we want to take a look at the job market for the people in

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• SEQUEL Data Warehouse Picks Up Where RODIN Left Off

  February 22, 2016 Alex Woodie

  Not every IBM i shop needs a big data warehouse to store and analyze information about their operations. But for those organizations whose data needs go beyond basic reporting capabilities, it is good to know there are tools like HelpSystems‘ SEQUEL Data Warehouse, which was formally called RODIN and which the company just released at version 8.0 with substantial new functionality. It has been a year-and-a-half since HelpSystems acquired Coglin Mill, the Rochester, Minnesota, based company that developed RODIN. Once dubbed “the IBM i platforms best-kept secret,” RODIN provided enterprise-grade data preparation capabilities and extract, transform, and load (ETL)

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• iNext Revealed As IBM i 7.3

  February 22, 2016 Dan Burger

  As psychological thrillers go, the IBM i strategy and roadmap falls short of entertaining movies like “Gravity” and “Chinatown” or good reads like “The Andromeda Strain” and “In Cold Blood.” But there’s always an element of suspense when a new release of the IBM i operating system is lurking in the shadows. Chief Architect Steve Will provided a heads up last week that what’s coming is more than the typical cloak and dagger Technology Refresh. To the casual observer, a new release of IBM‘s best camouflaged operating system isn’t due to arrive for another two years. It was 2014

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• Mad Dog 21/21: Legacy System

  February 22, 2016 Hesh Wiener

  In mid-2017, IBM chairman and CEO Ginni Rometty will turn 60. If she honors IBM’s traditions, December 31 of next year will be her last day as CEO. With time running low, Rometty is driving Big Blue to undergo dramatic change. She is making strategic acquisitions, executing significant disposals and forcing changes in the ranks of top executives. There’s no more Ms. Nice Gal, if there ever was one. For Rometty and for IBM, it is do or die . . . or, as some fear, perhaps both. The most noteworthy moment in Rometty’s tenure came in October

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• The Rewards of IBM i Community Engagement

  February 22, 2016 Dan Burger

  In a world where outlandish claims, one-upsmanship, and hyperbole are as certain as the sun rising each day, it’s no exaggeration to describe the late Al Barsa as the greatest IBM midrange advocate of all time. Like the system itself, Barsa was brilliant and meticulously thorough. He knew the system as well as anyone. The IBM midrange community needs more people like Al Barsa. Not that it has none. It simply needs more. Barsa was a real piece of work, and that should be interpreted in the most complementary way. He could be difficult. He could be eccentric. But he

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• IBM Wheels And Deals On Big Iron Compute And Memory

  February 15, 2016 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  With the Power8 processors having been on the market in IBM‘s Power Systems machines for nearly two years now, and Intel widely expected to launch its “Broadwell” Xeon server processors within the next few months, you might think that Big Blue would be out there wheeling and dealing, offering all kinds of clever deals to try to keep machines moving. Maybe IBM’s sales force is doing this, and maybe its resellers are doing this, but the past two years during the Power8 generation have been the most quiet ones I can remember when it comes to a lack of

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• All Signs Point To The Cloud, But Will IBM i Crowd Follow?

  February 15, 2016 Alex Woodie

  You don’t need a weatherman to see that clouds are quickly building. American companies are moving workloads to big public computing clouds from Amazon, Microsoft, IBM, and others at an unprecedented rate, spurring a massive data center building boom. But will IBM i shops fall in line and move to the cloud? That’s where the forecast gets a little iffy. There’s an abundance of signals reflecting big uptake of clouds, including public clouds run by the aforementioned companies, as well as private clouds run by managed service providers (MSPs) and IBM business partners. A January study of

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• Speed Versus Need In IBM i Mobile Initiatives

  February 15, 2016 Dan Burger

  As mobile access to corporate communications and data becomes more widespread in IBM midrange shops, those who are just arriving at the party can learn a great deal from those who came before them. We learn from our mistakes, but actually it’s a lot less bloody when we learn from others mistakes. And when mistakes do get made; there will be pressure to step on the accelerator before turning on the lights. Damn the darkness. Let’s go mobile! Security and employee education are two major issues that are being de-emphasized or ignored until something bad happens. If it wasn’t for

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• As I See It: Beware Of Beware

  February 15, 2016 Victor Rozek

  At some point in our lives, a transformative event or some perceived injustice propels many of us to become active in social or political movements. At least for a period of time. Regardless of left/right orientation, where politics and social justice matters are concerned, emotions tend to run high and rhetoric flows. And since there are few, if any, centrist movements committed to nothing nobler than nurturing the status quo, activists typically congregate on the margins, doing and saying things they think will best publicize their cause. The more outrageous and controversial their actions, the more media coverage they are

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