• Rocket Rebrands, Updates, and Discounts Terminal Emulator

  January 27, 2021 Alex Woodie

  Greenscreen interfaces may not look pretty, but they continue to be effective and people continue to use them. That longevity among IBM i and System Z shops is a big reason why Rocket Software last week decided to rebrand its BlueZone offering as the Rocket Terminal Emulator. Rocket is trying to drum up interest in the new software, which also supports the latest security protocols, by offering a steep discount on license and subscription fees, but only for a limited time.

  BlueZone, which Rocket Software obtained with its 2006 acquisition of Seagull Software, has been the go-to product for …

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• IBM i Software And Power Systems Upgrades Keep Rolling Forward

  January 18, 2021 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  During tough economic times, I am fond of reminding people – and especially myself as I try to remain calm in a recession or whatever the heck this is we are dealing with now during the coronavirus pandemic – that business, in the aggregate, never goes to zero. No matter how bad it gets, thus far in the modern era starting perhaps with the Renaissance and maybe even longer but certainly since the agricultural and industrial revolutions in the 1700s, people still need stuff and they need people to grow or make it.

  That doesn’t mean it is easy, however. …

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• 2021 Predictions for IBM i, Part 1

  January 13, 2021 Alex Woodie

  With an eventful 2020 thankfully in the rearview mirror, it’s time to start thinking about what 2021 might have in store for us. The IBM i community, like most of the world, could use a little bit of hope at the moment. We asked IBM i community leaders to deliver predictions, and they responded.

  Liam Allan, who is a consultant at Seiden Group and the creator of ILE Editor, has a couple of predictions for IT Jungle.

  “My focus is mainly software. I do still predict Node.js gaining traction on IBM i,” Allan writes. “The tooling is really …

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• Paving The Road Ahead For A Better Ride

  January 4, 2021 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  We always sit behind the wheel of the present as we drive to the future with our baggage from the past in the trunk.

  It is with this in mind that we contemplate 2021 and the uncertainty of regional, national, and global economies as well as how the coronavirus pandemic will be handled around the world in some pretty tricky political climates. These forces will affect all IBM i customers, of course, and we are not so much interested in describing all of these complex turbulences as they intertwine. What we do want to do is provide a few ideas …

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• Some Confusion Around IBM i 7.1 And IBM i 7.2 Support

  December 14, 2020 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  In the wake of writing last week’s discussion about how Big Blue would be supporting the IBM i operating system, database, and systems software stack out to 2032 and beyond, I discovered some anomalies in the documentation that IBM has put out regarding extended support for specific IBM i releases.

  For many customers, getting beyond IBM i 7.1 is impossible for various reasons, which we have discussed in the past. Some of the reasons are technical – customers have lost their source code and they can’t tweak it to run on more modern releases of hardware and software, or their …

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• X Marks The Spot For CYBRA’s Forms Software

  December 14, 2020 Alex Woodie

  When it comes to creating forms and labels on the IBM i server, CYBRA’s MarkMagic is one of the most frequently used products in the market, and is used by the biggest companies in consumer goods and retail. With the latest release of MarkMagic X, the company is finding new and creative ways to get additional functionality into the hands of its users.

  MarkMagic X, which is also called version 10, introduces a host of new features that have been requested by CYBRA’s sizable installed base. With over 30 years in business, CYBRA has amassed 2,700 customers, including nine …

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• New Release Of ACS Now Available

  December 9, 2020 Alex Woodie

  IBM delivered a new release of Access Client Solutions (ACS) last week, right on schedule. With ACS version 1.1.8.6, users will find a host of new features designed to accelerate their productivity across a range of uses.

  ACS is the Java-based utility that has become one of the most used (and useful) ways that administrators, programmers, and engineers can interact with the IBM i server. The software, which is free to IBM i customers on maintenance, features a 5250 emulator, 5250 printer emulation, data transfer capabilities, IFS file viewing, spool file management, and a virtual console for LAN and HMC …

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• To 2032 . . . And Beyond!

  December 7, 2020 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  As you sit here in 2020, can you even imagine 2032? Can you imagine beyond that? Oddly enough, I can imagine three or four decades out from here a lot more easily than I can do a dozen years, even though I know the error bars get longer and the probabilistic clouds get fuzzier the further into the future you wander with your mind. So what does it mean, really, when Big Blue commits to support the IBM i platform at least until 2032, a mere dozen years away in a platform that, depending on how you want to …

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• How IBM i Fits Into the Evolving ERP Market

  November 30, 2020 Alex Woodie

  IBM i remains a solid platform on which to run an ERP system. But with the shift to the cloud, not to mention a surge in homegrown application development on IBM i, the platform’s future for packaged ERP deployments is uncertain.

  The IBM midrange platform has a rich history of packaged ERP applications for a range of business types. From discrete manufacturing and trucking to banking and healthcare management, software vendors have targeted the IBM i platform and its predecessors to run integrated ERP systems and other similar types of business applications for over decades.

  But the go-go ERP deployments …

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• You Can’t Just Keep Doing What You Have Always Done

  November 30, 2020 Rob McNelly

  There are philosophical differences that exist between people regarding the best ways to configure, manage, and maintain infrastructure, and this holds as true for infrastructure built around IBM i as it is for other kinds of platforms. The easiest and fastest thing to do – and what makes the most sense according to plenty of people – is to do what they have always done. Just keep replicating the past out into the future to infinity.

  Others point out that this mindset stifles progress and ignores all of the innovations that have come to the IBM i platform through the …

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