• IBM’s Power Systems Battle Plan To Take On 2023

  February 15, 2023 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Human beings treat every year as if they are distinct, and that means businesses have to do the same. Strategies evolve over time and deal with discontinuities like recessions, but tactics are ever-changing as companies cope with the conditions on the ground, not the view from the headquarters. And thus, the Power Systems segment within IBM’s Systems division within its Infrastructure group is no different, but this year is a bit different as the top brass in Power Systems are actually giving us some insight into the battle plan for the year.

  Ken King, general manager of the Power Systems …

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• Zero-Day Vulnerability in Fortra’s GoAnywhere MFT Being Actively Exploited

  February 15, 2023 Alex Woodie

  A critical security vulnerability in Fortra’s (formerly HelpSystems) managed file transfer (MFT) solution, GoAnywhere MFT, is being actively exploited to steal data from companies and possibly even to spread ransomware according to published reports. Fortra told customers to consider every managed credential in their GoAnywhere environment to be compromised, shut down cloud instances of the service, and issued an emergency patch for the zero-day security vulnerability.

  Security reporter Brian Krebs was the first to share news of the vulnerability, which is described as remote code injection flaw that requires administrative console access for successful exploitation. In a February 2 post …

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• Getting Ready for IBM i Cloud Migrations

  February 15, 2023 Alex Woodie

  Interest in the cloud is growing at the moment as IBM i shops put all their run-time options on the table. However, customers who decide to move IBM i workloads to the cloud often don’t have a firm grasp on everything that goes into such a migration. There’s a lot of prep work that needs to be done, and too many shops are not ready when moving day arrives.

  Many IBM i shops are considering a move to the cloud, according to the 2023 IBM i Marketplace Study from Fortra (formerly HelpSystems). The report showed that cloud migrations moved from …

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• Four Hundred Monitor, February 15

  February 15, 2023 Jenny Thomas

  It’s been a wild week around the world. While we can’t promise you the possibility of extraterrestrial activity – as was implied might be happening over the skies of the United States – we can promise the relevant news and resources of the week. Granted, not as exciting as little green men, but still of interest for our IBM i ecosystem. Our calendar is a one-stop shop of webinars and events from the industry. This week we have added a ton to our Chats, Webinars, Seminars, Shows, and Other Happenings, so be sure to take a look at all the …

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• IBM i Debugger Comes to VS Code

  February 15, 2023 Alex Woodie

  At long last, IBM i developers can now debug their code in a development environment other than Rational Developer for IBM i or Merlin. The news came last week, when Liam Allan announced that the ILE debugging feature is now available in Code for IBM i, his third-party, IBM i-centric plug-in for Visual Studio Code.

  “Debugging ILE COBOL and RPGLE inside @code like it’s any other day!” Allan tweeted from his @Notesofbarry Twitter account. “I’m pumped for this release #ibmi.”

  Indeed, this day has been a long time in coming. Allan, who has not been shy about sharing his dislike …

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• AIX: The Last Standing Commercial Unix

  February 13, 2023 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Nearly six decades ago, a bunch of researchers at AT&T Bell Labs, MIT, and General Electric started work on a new multi-user operating system for General Electric mainframes called Multiplexed Information and Computing Service, or MULTICS. After four years of work, the project was mothballed, but was reborning when Ken Thompson, a researcher at Bell Labs, created a single-user operating system based on the ideas behind MULTICS to run on a PDP-7 that Ma Bell had laying around.

  And thus UNICS – and what would eventually become Unix and the whole open systems revolution – was born. With Unix came …

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• Thoroughly Modern: Flexible And Fractional Staffing Models That Deliver

  February 13, 2023 Christine McDowell

  If you run an organization that relies on IBM i (AS/400, iSeries) systems, then you know how important it is to have the right skills and expertise accessible when you need them. The reality facing IT leaders is that having the right staff can be both a challenge and costly, but it doesn’t need to be.

  By augmenting your teams with the right skills, you can get the help you need when you need it without needing to hire full-time staff. Let’s explore the benefits of augmenting your teams with IBM i (AS/400, iSeries) and other skills.

  Integration Services

  Integrating …

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• Cutting IT Costs Is Not A Priority, And That’s Good News

  February 13, 2023 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  For the past nine years that Fortra (formerly HelpSystems) has been putting together the IBM i Marketplace Survey, one of the first things we always look at is the Top IT Concerns part of the survey results. It is a barometer that tells you what IBM i shops are thinking might happen in the future even if it is not an actual prediction about what will happen in our economy and the IBM i community.

  It’s sentiment informed by the budgetary processes that were at work as 2022 came to a close.

  The most important thing I look at every …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 25, Number 7

  February 13, 2023 Doug Bidwell

  This week brought more security vulnerabilities in the airspace above us, and also around the world with weird sightings in the United States, Canada, China, and Russia. Now we have security vulnerabilities in open source code that is part of the IBM i stack.

  First, we have a Security Bulletin. IBM Java SDK and IBM Java Runtime for IBM i are vulnerable to bypassing security restrictions, denial of service attacks, and data integrity impacts due to multiple vulnerabilities, which you can find out more about at this link. There are fixes as shown below by IBM i release and …

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• Fresche Nabs Silveredge for Application Services

  February 8, 2023 Alex Woodie

  Silveredge Consulting, the Chicago-based provider of application support services, has been acquired by Fresche Solutions, the Montreal-based IBM i software and services business. The deal nets Fresche a respected consulting shop with a long record of supporting IBM i-based ERP systems such as BPCS and PRMS and two-and-a-half dozen senior RPG programmers.

  Founded in 1987, Silveredge Consulting developed a solid reputation as a provider of application support services. The company started out supporting manufacturers in the Chicago region that ran on the BPCS and PRMS packages, which were also developed in the area. Over the ensuing 35 years, the company …

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