• Generative AI Is Part Of Application Modernization Now

  August 21, 2023 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Generative AI is funny in that it is both an application in its own right when equipped with a chatbot interface and some intelligent prompting with guardrails to keep it from hallucinating and it can also be used as a tool to either generate chunks of applications based on large language models tweaked with a library of code.

  This is the first time that we can think of where the application is the tool or the tool is the application, and it presents a kind of chicken and egg conundrum for IT departments all over the world. Mainly: Where do …

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• Don’t Have A Conniption If Big Blue Goes All Subscription

  August 14, 2023 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Big Blue has been pretty clear that it is not only going to put Power Systems machinery in its own cloud as well as those run by its business partners, but that it going to offer hardware and systems software alike under a cloud consumption model with as much of a unified pricing scheme, based on subscriptions, for on premises, IBM Cloud, and partner cloud deployments.

  As we have already reported back in February, the IBM i operating system and its integrated Db2 for i relational database is already available under subscription pricing, which includes the license to use the …

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• IBM Takes PowerVM And PowerVC Upscale

  August 9, 2023 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  There is a tension between integration and generalization that Big Blue has always managed when it comes to its Power Systems and System z platforms. IBM has to support the popular open source system tools and their interfaces if it wants to keep in lockstep with the IT industry, but at the same time it has to tightly integrate that open source software with its existing stacks. Sometimes, it needs to simplify the offerings it has created itself just to make it easier on its sales force and its customers, who do not want to have to keep track of …

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• Power Systems Down A Bit, But Holding Steady In Q2

  July 24, 2023 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Considering that we are over a year into the Power10 entry and midrange server upgrade cycle, and almost two years into the Power10 high-end cycle, the fact that the Power Systems server business is only down a few points in the second quarter is, well, normal. As in the old normal where things have a natural ebb and flow and the business is not just in a kind of 45 degree decline like we saw a decade ago.

  This is what happens when Big Blue sticks to its enterprise computing knitting and is not distracted by the money-losing proposition of …

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• Spending On Legacy Systems Stalls In Q1, 2023 Forecast Looks Weak

  July 12, 2023 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Neither Gartner nor IDC put out their quarterly server and storage reports for the public anymore, but IDC does still release a converged dataset that adds server and storage spending together and carves it up based on if it is spend on the clouds or for traditional – what we would call legacy – systems. The latest results are out for the first quarter of 2023, and there is what looks like a temporary stall in legacy system spending and it looks like it is going to get worse here in 2023 but return to growth in the coming years. …

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• Rocket Software Supports IBM i with New Data Intelligence Offering

  June 21, 2023 Alex Woodie

  You’ve probably seen it before: Two departments in the same company have different numbers in their BI reports, when the numbers should be the same. Tracking down these data discrepancies can be very difficult, especially when they touch systems like IBM i or System z mainframes. But with a new release of its Data Intelligence offering, Rocket Software thinks it has found a simpler way.

  Rocket Software has been selling its Data Intelligence product since it obtained it with its ASG Technologies acquisition back in 2021. The software was designed to help organizations track down data problems that surface as …

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• Storage Helps Power Systems Grow In The First Quarter

  April 24, 2023 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Here is a peculiar thing: It is almost like there are two different Power Systems customer sets. Those that spend big in the second quarter and fourth quarter of every year and those that spend less big in the first and third quarters of every year.

  While we understand the normal Q4 bump that happens because there are decades of traditions, founded on good budgetary and capacity planning practices, we are a bit perplexed why when it comes to the Power Systems market at least, Q2 is almost as good revenue-wise as the prior Q4. We admit fully that this …

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• IT Modernization Goes Beyond The Apps, Kyndryl Says

  April 17, 2023 Alex Woodie

  When the word “modernization” is said in the midrange and mainframe circles, it usually means application modernization, or transforming your older RPG and COBOL applications to look and feel like they just came off the Java or C# assembly line. But there’s another view of modernization that encompasses more than just the apps, and according to a new report from Kyndryl, there’s quite a bit of work to do.

  While Kyndryl is certainly familiar with the application modernization needs of IBM i and System Z shops, the company (formerly IBM Global Technology Services) takes a broader view of the term, …

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• Why Modernize Applications? The Reasons Might Surprise You

  April 3, 2023 Alex Woodie

  A wave of interest in application modernization seems to be cresting over IBM i and mainframe shops in the United States and Europe, and it’s having some unanticipated impacts. We’re also getting a better understanding of what’s motivating companies to jump into these potentially risky projects, which is a topic that EvolveWare touched on in its latest report.

  EvolveWare, which develops modernization tools for mainframe and IBM i applications, discussed several aspects of modernization in its report on modernization released last month. Our first take on the report, which is titled The State of Application Modernization 2023, focused …

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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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