• Four Hundred Monitor, April 3

  April 3, 2023 Jenny Thomas

  We may have flipped the page on the calendar, but the new month didn’t free us from the same issues that have been plaguing 2023. This week’s headlines bring us more news of layoffs and security worries, which we should probably expect to be par for the course in the foreseeable future. It’s not all bad news, though, and we have offered some resources and expert advice below to help you weather the coming weeks. Before you go, be sure to check the latest additions to our calendar for more in-person and online learning opportunities. Here’s wishing for a successful …

  Read more

• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 25, Number 14

  April 3, 2023 Doug Bidwell

  The IBM i 7.4 Technology Refresh 8 marker PTF is out, and we see it in HTTP Server Group 26. Nothing special so far, just the indication that it is out, but nothing on 7.3 or 7.5 groups, yet – only 7.4. Thank you, Jozef in New Zealand, for catching that, and sharing it! The Four Hundred collective thinks the IBM i TRs might be coming on April 11, but that has not been confirmed by Big Blue as yet.

  We mostly suspect this will happen because that is when ITJ Editor Alex Woodie scheduled a trip to Hawaii with …

  Read more

• LANSA Developing Business Intelligence Tool

  March 29, 2023 Alex Woodie

  LANSA is rolling out a new Web-based business intelligence tool. Dubbed LANSA BI, the new offering is based on an underlying analytics engine from Yellowfin and will be targeted predominantly at IBM i shops looking to give users greater access to actionable data.

  LANSA has used its fourth-generation language (4GL) development environment as a springboard for many other technological endeavors over the years. From Web and mobile modernization environments to application and data integration tools, from ecommerce engines to ERP suite, the Downers Grove, Illinois, company has been there and done that.

  It has even offered customers some rudimentary query …

  Read more

• Blazing The Trail For VTL In The Cloud

  March 29, 2023 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Making the decision to move IBM i applications to the cloud is a relatively easy endeavor. But covering all of the bases, particularly when it comes to disaster recovery and business continuity, takes some thought because even though the cloud is an ideal place to do HA and DR, not every cloud does it right. And doing it right often means using a mix of technologies and service providers.

  IT managers are thinking of moving their IBM i workloads to the cloud for good reasons. They do the math, they weigh the risks and rewards. They take into account all …

  Read more

• Data De-Dupe Gives VTL Customers More Options

  March 29, 2023 Alex Woodie

  When your IBM i backup data is 10x smaller, the backups complete more quickly and the local storage requirements are smaller. But that’s just the beginning of the savings for customers of LaserVault, which added a new data de-duplication feature to its virtual tape library (VTL) last year.

  LaserVault has been providing IBM i backup solutions for many decades, and launched its line of VTL solutions in 2006. Customers can get ViTL, as the VTL is called, as a Fibre Channel- or SAS-connected backup appliance (LaserVault partners with Supermicro for hardware) or as shrink-wrapped software that customers can run on …

  Read more

• Four Hundred Monitor, March 29

  March 29, 2023 Jenny Thomas

  As we inch (or depending where you live “float” due to some of the rains happening around the U.S.) toward April, the world remains cautious when it comes to just about everything. But it’s not easy to slow down technology, and probably not smart when it comes to happening in the world, and we do see IBM making some major moves in the chip industry in our Top Stories below. So thrown caution to the wind and don’t hesitate to catch up on the news around the industry, which we’ve cumulated for you below.

  Top Stories From Around The Jungle

  …

  Read more

• The Big Spending On IT Security Is Only Going To Get Bigger

  March 29, 2023 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Sometimes, numbers seem so big that they are almost meaningless. Depending on how you cut it, there is more than $3.4 trillion to more than $4.5 trillion in global spending on IT hardware, software, and services – not counting the payrolls for the for all of the combine IT departments of the corporate world plus all of those programmers and site recovery engineers who work at the hyperscalers and cloud builders. These are very big numbers indeed, even without those tens of millions of people on the payroll, who by our very rough estimation might account for somewhere around the …

  Read more

• IBM Tweaks Some Power Systems Prices Down, Others Up

  March 27, 2023 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Back in September and November of last year, with inflation running a bit crazy, IBM raised prices on selected Power Systems hardware and software with the price changes taking effect on January 1 this year. We went into the details back then, of course, but we are being proactive in looking for any price hikes that might come out of Big Blue relating to its Power Systems machines, systems software, and related storage and networking. And, as it turns out, there have been some more pricing actions that you need to be aware of.

  As we have pointed out …

  Read more

• Disaster Recovery: From OS/400 V5R3 To IBM i 7.4 In 36 Hours

  March 27, 2023 Jason Hardy

  Earlier this year, I wrote an article entitled The IBM Power Trap: Three Mistakes That Leave You Stuck that described how a series of decisions related to how you manage your applications and IBM Power can leave you stuck. A few people reached out to me with questions so I thought it might be appropriate to share a real-life story about one of our customers, we will call them Glass Corp International (GCI), that got caught in this trap and had to be rescued.

  With their busiest weekend of the year just days away, GCI, an Ohio-based company, had all …

  Read more

• The Disconnect In Modernization Planning And Execution

  March 27, 2023 Alex Woodie

  Feeling confident in your IBM i or mainframe application modernization plans? That could be due to your lack of understanding of what is about to transpire once you begin the project, according to a new survey from EvolveWare.

  EvolveWare, the Santa Clara, California, provider of modernization tools, last week released a study called The State of Application Modernization 2023. The 18-page report is based on a fourth-quarter survey conducted by Global Surveyz (that is not a typo) of 200 large American companies in financial services, insurance, and healthcare that are either in the midst of an application modernization …

  Read more

Previous Articles Next Articles