• What, And Who, The New Power S1012 Server Is Aimed At

  May 20, 2024 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  As you know full well by now, we have a new and final entry into the Power10 line of systems from IBM, the Power S1012, also known by its codename “Bonnell.” The Power S1012 entry server was announced two weeks ago and we did an architectural dive into the system last week based on the announcement letter and the Redbook on the system.

  After digging around a bit, this week we are going to do a comparative analysis on the Power S1012 machine compared to its predecessors, particularly the Power8-based Power S812 Mini machine from 2017, which was a similar …

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• Last Chance To Be A Part Of The IBM i Marketplace Survey

  November 1, 2023 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Soon, Forta will close out its annual IBM i Marketplace Survey, so now is your last chance to participate and help us all better understand what is going on in the IBM i on Power Systems community.

  The IBM i Marketplace Survey and its accompanying report and the webinar that goes over the results of the survey, which are both presented each February, are an invaluable resource for the IBM i community. This is particularly so since IDC, Gartner, Forrester, and the other IT market researchers and consultancies have long since stopped tracking Power Systems in any kind of detail …

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• So You Wanna Take Another IBM i Survey, Right?

  October 23, 2023 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  It is hard to believe that it has been a decade since the IBM i Marketplace Survey was conceived of by the late Dan Burger of IT Jungle and Tom Huntington of HelpSystems, now known as Fortra.

  As you might imagine, we miss Dan every day, and we are committed to the mission that he had to better understand what is going on in the IBM i base. Time is running out for you to participate and have your voice heard and your IBM i shop is counted. Please take a moment and take the survey, which you can do …

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• It’s Time To Tell Us How It Is And What You’re Doing

  October 2, 2023 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  The IBM i Marketplace Survey and its accompanying report and the webinar that goes over the results of the survey are an invaluable resource for the IBM i community. This is particularly so since IDC, Gartner, Forrester, and the other IT market researchers and consultancies have long since stopped tracking Power Systems in any kind of detail and certainly don’t spend a lot of time on the IBM i portion of it.

  Big Blue itself may have lots of insight into its customer base, but it certainly shares very little of that information with the IBM i community. (We get …

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• Facing The Challenges Of Upgrading Old Systems With The Cloud

  September 18, 2023 Jason Hardy

  If you are one of the many IBM i shops that has always created its own applications and that has a long history of investing in the AS/400, iSeries, System i, and IBM i platforms over the past three and a half decades at reasonably regular intervals to keep the hardware and the systems software current, you have it relatively easy and we definitely want to talk to you about your move to the cloud and how we might help.

  But if you are one of the many OS/400 and IBM i shops that have, for myriad reasons, gotten stuck …

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• Low-End IBM i P05 And P10 Tiers Go Subscription-Only Pricing First

  September 11, 2023 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  We were away for our annual summer hiatus relating to the Labor Day holiday in America when Big Blue decided, as we anticipated in mid-August, that it would begin the shift to all-subscription pricing for the IBM i operating system, the integrated Db2 for i relational database, and the related IBM i Licensed Program Products (LPPs) that have been commonly used by Power Systems customers all through the OS/400, i5/OS, and IBM i generations.

  Back in February, subscription pricing for the IBM i operating system and its integrated Db2 for i relational database was made available under subscription …

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• Critical Security Vulnerability In PowerVM Hypervisor

  May 22, 2023 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  IBM’s Product Security Incident Response Team (PSIRT) put out a notice on Wednesday, May 17, to inform the Power Systems installed base that there is a very serious security vulnerability in the PowerVM hypervisor. You can see the PSIRT notice at this link and the Security Bulletin: This Power System firmware update is being released to address CVE 2023-30438 at this link. This has a CVSS base score of 9.3, which means it is critical.

  We very rarely see any security vulnerabilities being reported for the PowerVM hypervisor or for the IBM i operating system itself, for that matter, …

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• Thoroughly Modern: Unlocking the Full Potential Of Your IBM i Applications

  May 15, 2023 Greg Patterson

  IBM i is the backbone of mission critical applications for over 120,000 customers worldwide in every conceivable industry and company size, particularly with companies ranging from $50 million to $1 billion in annual revenues and specializing in manufacturing, distribution, financial services, and healthcare. In other words, IBM i supports a significant share of the global economy.

  Although the IBM i platform is very productive, there are many things we can do to modernize our applications and provide more value to the business. But this is easier said than done. Some of the biggest challenges that that we face relate to …

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• The IBM i OS Base Is Older Than We Think, But Moving Ahead

  March 6, 2023 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Hardware upgrades are costly in terms of money and while it is always exciting to get a new system with that “new computer smell” – and you know what we are talking about – at least IBM i operating system and systems software upgrades don’t carry such a high price – provided you are on Software Maintenance and you do proper testing on your software before you make a jump to a new release.

  The other great thing about IBM i systems software is that any given release not only runs on the current new Power Systems hardware at the …

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• The Power Systems Base Is A Little Less Rusty

  February 27, 2023 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Another three years, and another upgrade cycle that can bring about the modernizing of the Power Systems iron that supports the IBM i customer base. Or, more precisely, another four distinct upgrade cycles that customers are on as they move off legacy iron to something more current than what they have.

  What we mean by this is that some customers are stuck on older releases because they are cheapskates by necessity or they have applications that can only run on older releases like OS/400 V5R3, i5/OS 5.4, or IBM i 6.1. Others are stuck on IBM i 7.1. Or IBM …

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