• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 19, Numbers 33 And 34

  August 30, 2017 Doug Bidwell

  My perspective on PTFs is that the development teams at IBM work with me and for me. They are part of my development team. They are there to help me over the rough spots and to keep me focused on the application side without distractions from the operating system and licensed internal code side.

  When I am distracted, I am costing my company money or one of my customers money, and the shortest path to a solution should be taken to get me back to focusing on the applications. Toward that end, I have developed the “15 Minute” rule: If …

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• Why Not Overclock Power Chips For IBM i?

  August 28, 2017 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Remember way back in 2000, when Intel, the world’s largest chip manufacturer and now the world’s dominant supplier of processors in the datacenter, said that it would be able to deliver processors that run at 10 GHz by 2011. Well, that was six years ago, and that sure as hell did not happen then and it is not going to happen now. But if anyone can crank the clocks high on a processor, it is IBM with its Power and System z engines, and we think it can push them a little higher and give certain customers who …

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• Syncsort CEO Discusses Vision Deal, Product Plans

  August 28, 2017 Alex Woodie

  Josh Rogers isn’t one to get overly animated, at least in an over-the-top “Ra Ra” kind of way. But in a conversation with IT Jungle last week, there was no disputing the Syncsort CEO’s excitement at closing the acquisition of Vision Solutions and the prospect of delivering big data integration products to a new pool of IBM i customers.

  To quickly recap: In early July, Centerbridge Partners, a large equity capital firm, acquired controlling stakes in both Vision Solutions and Syncsort, and announced plans to merge the two companies under the Syncsort brand. Two weeks ago, the vendors formally …

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• Guru: Legible Hexadecimal

  August 28, 2017 Ted Holt

  Since I am a normal red-blooded human being, I try to make life as easy as possible for myself. I don’t do very well in general, but occasionally I manage to afford myself a bit of comfort. Recently I had to deal with long strings of hexadecimal digits. Trying to read that stuff was more than I could deal with, so I wrote a function to help me.

  It’s easy to think of hexadecimal literal as strings because they contain the letters A through F. However, they are not strings, but numbers. We use the letters A through F for …

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• As I See It: So You’re Thinking About Retirement

  August 28, 2017 Victor Rozek

  If your IT career spanned the AS/400 years, you may be of an age when you are considering retirement. Certainly, if both your health and your bank account are reasonably robust, retirement can be as sweetly anticipated as a tax refund. The prospect of leisure and travel, or just putting a halt to the daily grind, exerts a strong gravitational pull. But reality is like the spellchecker of the imagination: it corrects misconceptions.

  We are, in fact, absurdly encouraged to view decline as the Golden Years. Retirement has long been romanticized by everyone from the AARP, to financial planners, to …

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• Investing In IBM i: Adventures In Venture Capital

  August 28, 2017 Dan Burger

  The IBM i community was stirred last month when Vision Solutions, the dominant software vendor in the high availability arena, was acquired by a private equity company that believes the IBM i market is worthy of an investment estimated in the hundreds of millions of dollars. That’s some serious cash. In addition to buying software, intellectual property, and a significant customer base, this private equity firm’s deal commands attention among IBM i observers who have seen investments lead to consolidation of software and service providers.

  For now, it looks like a trend without end for a handful of vendors …

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• Firm Brokers MuleSoft’s Passage Into IBM i World

  August 16, 2017 Alex Woodie

  Open source is not the best model for everything in the computing world. But you’d be hard-pressed to find a better use for open source than data and application integration, which are notoriously messy, expensive, and brittle. Which is why, if you’re not familiar with MuleSoft, you likely will be in the future.

  MuleSoft got its start over 10 years ago when Ross Mason decided to start developing an open integration platform. Mason thought: Why should developers toil to build custom-coded integrations over and over again when it could be built correctly one time and then shared with the world? …

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• If RDi Was Free, Would You Go For A Ride?

  August 16, 2017 Dan Burger

  Some interesting developments have occurred with the Rational Developer for i (RDi) team. First came the extraction from IBM Software Group and relocation within the IBM i development organization. Then came the integration of RDi development efforts involving IBM and HelpSystems. What’s next? Perhaps a free lightweight version of RDi designed to entice more IBM i developers to trade in their old tools and take a closer look at what they can gain with RDi.

  A new request for enhancement (RFE #108558) may gather enough momentum to bring a free RDi to market. That leads to the question of whether …

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• Who Says You Can’t Go Home Again

  August 16, 2017 Victor Rozek

  As anyone who has ever managed an IT installation can attest, computer technology offers equal measures of empowerment and annoyance. On one hand, computers allow us to run our businesses on a scale of complexity unimaginable just a few decades ago. Multiple platforms churn in multiple time zones, global data transfers clog the ether; and people from different cultures, speaking different languages, are able to collaborate digitally for the good of the enterprise.

  On the other hand, management must perpetually contend with the aggravation of the archaic. Even the finest computers and most elegant software are cursed by the specter …

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• Four Hundred Monitor, August 16

  August 16, 2017 Dan Burger

  If you read Steve Will’s blogs and follow his itinerary of speaking engagements, you wonder if the guy is on pace to set a record for promoting the IBM i platform. And we don’t even know all the behind the scenes stuff. The strategy is simple. Have Steve Will talk and blog until every IBM i customer realizes that this system is fully capable of running a modern business. But that the message has to reach beyond the IBM i faithful. By his own admission, he is reaching about 1 percent of those who should be hearing the story. He …

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