• How ERP Giants Are Building GenAI Into Their Products

  December 9, 2024 Alex Woodie

  We are still near the top of Gartner’s hype curve when it comes to generative AI. Larger companies that have discipline and money, and startups with time and ambition, are finding success with GenAI, but many organizations are still in the planning and roll-out phase. The same could be said for ERP vendors, who have started their GenAI journeys but are expected to ramp up adoption significantly in the years to come.

  Since the dawn of the mainframe age, computers have automated the work that was previously done by people. Large armies of file clerks were no longer needed once …

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• 2024: An IBM i Year In Review

  December 4, 2024 Alex Woodie

  It’s hard to believe that yet another year is coming to a close. As 2024 rolls to its merciful end, it’s time for us to take stock of the major events and announcements that impacted the IBM i community.

  January

  News broke in late January that revenue in IBM’s Power Systems business grew for the second year in a row in 2023. TPM’s model showed $1.53 billion in external Power Systems sales for the year, which was a hair above the 2022 figure, which was a hair above the 2021 figure. It’s not 2010-era numbers, when the figure was north …

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• IBM’s Fall 2024 Code for IBM i Enhancements

  November 13, 2024 Alex Woodie

  Adoption of Code for i continues to soar among IBM i developers, as they shift from heavy, expensive integrated development environments (IDEs) to lighter, open-source options. With the latest Technology Refreshes (TRs) for IBM i, IBM is making the VS Code plug-in even more useful for RPG and COBOL developers.

  Code for IBM i is the brainchild of Liam Allan, the midrange wunderkind with an intense aversion to Rational Developer for IBM i (RDi), IBM’s Java-based flagship IDE for IBM i. As adoption of the VS Code extension grew in the summer of 2022, IBM smartly hired Allan as a …

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• Another GenAI-Powered Testing Tool Comes to IBM i

  November 6, 2024 Alex Woodie

  IBM says it’s bringing a new AI accelerator to the Power line to drive compute-hungry generative AI workloads, such as the new RPG coding assistant that it’s also developing. But IBM won’t be the only source of such GenAI-powered coding assistants, as a company called Abstracta recently announced another one.

  There’s a lot of interest in the Spyre accelerators that IBM announced earlier this year for the System z mainframe and which IBM announced last month during its TechExchange conference will be coming to Power. Considering the massive demand for Nvidia GPUs, which could plug into past generations of Power …

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• IBM Bolsters Db2 for i With Tech Refreshes

  October 23, 2024 Alex Woodie

  IBM is delivering a handful of new database capabilities with the latest batch of Technology Refreshes for IBM i 7.5 and 7.4, including new function to create Universally Unique Identifiers (UUIDs), new capabilities for the security data mart, and various enhancements to SQL-based IBM i Services.

  A UUID is a random 36-character, 128-bit alphanumeric string that can be used to identify something, such as a row or table in a database, with near certainty that the identifier is unique, has never been used before, and will never be used again.

  The UUID system was first implemented by the Open Software …

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• How To Have The Wisdom Of Experts Woven Into Your Code

  October 14, 2024 Nicholas DeLessio

  No matter how far you are down the road with your DevOps automation journey, or even if you’re not yet starting that journey, it’s probably a good idea to have a code checker; not everyone can have a Linus Torvalds review their work (as famously happens with the open source Linux kernel), but there are automation tools available for various languages and platforms that do static code analysis and they are the next best thing.

  These tools, sometimes called “code linters” (because they remove the fuzzy bits out of application logic like actual linters remove imperfections stuck to our clothing), …

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• Big Blue Bolsters Navigator For i With New Stuff

  October 14, 2024 Alex Woodie

  Changes are afoot with Navigator for i, the Web-based administrative tool for the IBM i platform, which gains a range of new capabilities with the latest Technology Refresh. Some of the more visible additions to Navigator include complete support for the Advanced Job Scheduler and expanded support for new security journal data mart. But not to be overlooked are the retirement of the old Web Admin GUI (with replacements in Navigator), and enhancements to PDI.

  Navigator for i is IBM’s strategic Web-based console for administrating the IBM i server. The product enables administrators to monitor and manage various components of …

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• Surprise! It’s 2024 Fall TR Time for IBM i

  October 9, 2024 Alex Woodie

  IBM announced the Technology Refreshes (TRs) for IBM i version 7.5 and 7.4 yesterday, bringing a host of new capabilities to the proprietary operating system. As expected, the surprise update covers a range of IBM i facilities, including Db2, Navigator, ACS, PowerHA, and the development tools.

  Navigator gets several more enhancements with the new TRs, including: a new dashboard with software licensing information; Web-based administration of network facilities; support for monitoring of Java 11 and Java 17 jobs; enhancements to the Performance Data Investigator (PDI); and new options for working with audit journals, among other capabilities.

  IBM also includes the …

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• The Many Faces Of IT Modernization

  October 7, 2024 Alex Woodie

  The clarion call of modernization has been heard loud and clear among IBM i and System z shops for decades. Old IT is hampering your competitiveness, they’re told, and something must be done about it. In reality, there’s no single path to modernization, which is a multi-faceted phenomenon that can have wide ranging impacts on the business, Rocket Software says in a new report.

  Business transformation is separate from IT transformation, but the two are linked, according to Rocket Software’s new study, titled IT Modernization Without Disruption, which is based on a survey of 309 decision-maker at System …

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• Ethical Hackers Discuss Penetration Work On IBM i

  September 16, 2024 Alex Woodie

  The IBM i server is heralded as a secure platform, but in reality, it is susceptible to a range of attacks, including common ones and others that are unique to the platform. To help push the security ball forward and encourage secure IBM i configurations, researchers from Silent Signal recently discussed their latest work during a European ethical hacking conference.

  In just a few years working on IBM i, Bálint Varga-Perke and Zoltan Panczel, the co-founders of the Hungarian company Silent Signal, have identified a handful security vulnerabilities on the platform, including a moderate security flaw in DDN in …

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