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New GM Wants To Push IBM Power With Hybrid Cloud And AI
November 13, 2023 Timothy Prickett Morgan
Three months ago, the Power division within IBM’s Infrastructure group got a new general manager. This changing of the guard happens every couple of years as Big Blue moves executives around so they can get managerial experience across different lines of business, and this time around, it is Tom McPherson who has been tapped for the top job in the division that is the home of the IBM i platform.
McPherson got his bachelor’s degree in electrical and electronics engineering from Rutgers University in 1990 and got his master’s degree in computer engineering from Syracuse University in 1994. We don’t …
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Kyndryl Inspects The Modernization Plans Of IBM i And Mainframe Shops
November 6, 2023 Alex Woodie
What paths are IBM i and mainframe users taking in terms of application modernization and digital transformation, and what sorts of results are those efforts producing? Those are good questions, and they are ones that Kyndryl, the former IBM Global Technology Services arm, provides some answers to in a new report.
Kyndryl commissioned Coleman Parkes Research to survey 500 IBM i and mainframe shops from around the world about their plans for application modernization and transformation. The survey results form the basis for its appropriately named 2023 State of Mainframe Modernization Survey Report, which you can download here. …
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Spooky New Security Vulns Lurking on IBM i
November 1, 2023 Alex Woodie
Halloween has come and gone, but the scares will stick around for a while for IBM i administrators, who have been given more than a dozen fixes by IBM to address some pretty serious security vulnerabilities recently revealed in the heart of the operating system, including in spooky old friends Java and OpenSSL.
On October 27, IBM issued a security bulletin for two CVEs, including CVE-2023-40685 and CVE-2023-40686, which describe two separate but related security flaws in the Management Central component of IBM i Navigator in IBM i versions 7.2 through 7.5.
The first privilege escalation vulnerability, CVE-2023-40685, could …
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Eradani Debuts DevOps Suite for IBM i
October 4, 2023 Alex Woodie
It’s been five years since Dan Magid, the former CEO of Aldon and an executive with Rocket Software, has been involved in the IBM i change management and DevOps business. But with next week’s launch of Eradani DevOps at COMMON’s NAViGATE conference, the longtime change management expert is getting back into the game. This time, however, Magid is taking a decidedly different approach.
What makes Eradani DevOps stand out from other change management tools on IBM i is its focus on open source tools. The folks at Eradani have realized that application developers in the mainstream IT world have pretty …
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Four Hundred Monitor, October 4
October 4, 2023 Jenny Thomas
Investing in the future of the IBM i is not something we hear much about. So, when we learned about a new fellowship program from Kisco Systems, we were all ears. The goal of this new program is to encourage IBM i customers to launch careers by helping them develop IBM i skills in house. Applicants for the fellowship must be sponsored by an active IBM i customer and will receive: free IBM i and RPG training; a one-year COMMON membership including registration for two conferences; and recognition in the IBM i community through podcasts and the COMMON Education Foundation. …
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40 Years Of DB2, But Even More For That No-Name Database Embedded In The System/38
October 2, 2023 Timothy Prickett Morgan
Last week, Big Blue celebrated the 40th anniversary of the launch of its Database 2 relational database management system for its venerable System/370, System 308X, and System/390 mainframes. It is now called Db2, because marketing people can’t leave anything alone, and even though we now have this thing called Db2 for i, IBM didn’t mention this red-headed stepchild of a relational database as part of its celebration.
Not even once. And that’s just fine by us because the integrated relational database management system that has been the heart of our venerable System/38 and its progeny was never DB2/400 or …
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Four Hundred Monitor, September 27
September 27, 2023 Jenny Thomas
Investing in the future of the IBM i is not something we hear much about. So, when we learned about a new fellowship program from Kisco Systems, we were all ears. The goal of this new program is to encourage IBM i customers to launch careers by helping them develop IBM i skills in house. Applicants for the fellowship must be sponsored by an active IBM i customer and will receive: free IBM i and RPG training; a one-year COMMON membership including registration for two conferences; and recognition in the IBM i community through podcasts and the COMMON Education Foundation. …
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ARCAD’s Deal with IBM for DevOps In Merlin Is Exclusive
September 20, 2023 Alex Woodie
When IBM launched Merlin in 2022, it touted the browser-based environment as a new way to deliver functionality to the IBM i installed base and potentially to distribute third-party solutions. But right now, the only third-party vendor IBM is working with when it comes to Merlin is ARCAD Software, which has exclusive rights to supply the DevOps components within Merlin, according to executives with both companies.
IBM introduced Merlin with great fanfare in May 2022 as a potentially transformative technology. Not only was Merlin the first browser-based integrated development environment (IDE) from IBM, providing an alternative to the powerful but …
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Is The Cloud On Your IBM i Horizon?
September 20, 2023 Alex Woodie
It’s almost impossible to ignore the enormous pull that the cloud is exerting on the software industry today. Companies that run the IBM i server are also subject to that gravity, although it has different ramifications for their technological future, as well as the decisions they’ll make if they want to run their operations in the cloud.
IBM i shops, almost by definition, are not running on the cloud today, at least not in the public cloud the way it is normally defined. While there are a handful of managed service providers (MSPs) offering private cloud IBM i runtimes, and …
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Profound Logic Explores AI Paths for IBM i
August 23, 2023 Alex Woodie
The burgeoning world of artificial intelligence may seem far away to IBM i shops, but in fact, the technology is quite accessible to the users. One vendor that’s helping to guide IBM i users through the growing AI jungle is Profound Logic.
Profound Logic is best known as an application modernization vendor, and one that provides tools for developing Web and mobile interfaces for IBM i applications, as well as working with APIs on the platform.
In a series of YouTube videos, Profound Logic co-founder and CEO Alex Roytman provides a rundown on the latest developments in the world …
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