As we reported in last week’s issue, Big Blue increased pricing on its pricing for per-core perpetual software licenses, per user licensing fees, Software Maintenace, and subscription prices back on January 1. We missed the change – again, apologies for that – and let you know about the basics of these and other hardware and software price changes. This week we are going to look at the effect of these changes on the cost of the base IBM i systems software stack. To review: On September 9 last year, IBM announced the price increases that went into effect as … The post Drilling Down Into New IBM ..read more

Recognizing the importance of proactive cybersecurity, Maxava is proud to announce the launch of Maxava Security, a ground-breaking solution set to revolutionize IBM i data protection. Departing from conventional reactive measures prevalent in many IBM i security solutions, Maxava Security heralds a proactive paradigm shift, prioritizing heightened visibility along with swift recovery over the traditional incident-response model. The IBM i server has long been a workhorse in the business world. Renowned for its reliability, stability, and ability to secure, it hums away in the background, runn ..read more

Editor’s Note: This was originally scheduled to be published on April 1. No joke. And for a lot of complex reasons, that could not happen. But, it’s still fun, so enjoy. I started out one morning, purely interested in having a bit of fun. Honest. In RSS within ACS, I often like to run this SQL: select * from json_table( QSYS2.HTTP_GET('https://icanhazdadjoke.com/', '{"header": "Accept,application/json", "sslTolerate":"true"}'), 'lax $' columns ("joke" varchar(200) CCSID 1208) ) Okay, that was fun. This is harmless, good fun. But then I thought, what ..read more

With an election looming that promises to be conducted with snake-oil ethics, the Congress recently turned its attention from its usual dysfunctional finger pointing to hear testimony about the growing plague of deepfakes. The usual suspects were represented, in this case Google and Meta, by a spokesman from the industry-funded lobbying group NetChoice. Not surprisingly, they wrapped themselves in the First Amendment and accepted little or no responsibility for what their users post online. They argued that existing laws governing fraud and harassment were sufficient to protect targets (aka vi ..read more

Hey, this is interesting. We have no security vulnerabilities to report on this week for the IBM i platform. And this is also interesting. There is a new version of Access Client Solutions, called V1.1.9.5. We will be putting together a news story to talk about this, but in the meantime, we thought you should know that it is out. There ain’t a lot else going on, as you will see. Here is the rundown of PTF Groups by IBM i release level since we last published: PTF Groups 7.5: IBM i Access Client Solutions V1.1.9.5 QMGTOOLS PTF Groups 7.4: … The post IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 26, Number 15 appea ..read more

IBM i shops run an incredibly diverse array of software, including open source programs, packaged applications, and homegrown software. When it comes to business applications, data from the last nine State of IBM i Marketplace Surveys from Fortra helps to tell the tale. The IBM i platform was born to run applications. It’s right there in the original name, after all: Application System/400. Software vendors flocked to support the AS/400 following its launch in 1988, and while there has been some attrition over the years, there remains a strong core of vendors developing and supporting applicat ..read more

Self-service password reset cuts both ways. On one hand, users want convenient ways to reset passwords they invariably will forget. On the other, events like the recent MGM cyberattack show that more thorough user authentication is required. The folks at identity management solution provider Avatier think they have come up with a novel way to satisfy both camps – without getting cut in the process. You might not have heard about Avatier, but the Pleasanton, California, has been quietly serving the single sign-on (SSO) and identity management needs of IBM i shops for the past 24 years. It’s int ..read more

IBM i shops running the ZendPHP distribution of the open source programming language and runtime will be interested to know that Perforce Software recently added full support for IBM i with ZendHQ, the extension for ZendPHP that provides observability and orchestration functionality for PHP-based applications. Previously, IBM i shops had to run part of ZendHQ on Linux or Windows. Perforce Software originally launched ZendHQ back in June 2022 to give ZendPHP customers more visibility and control of their increasingly complex PHP environments. ZendHQ is a superset of functionality that bundles e ..read more

East Coast residents in the U.S. were all shook up last week after a 4.8-magnitude earthquake centered near Lebanon, New Jersey. The tremor was felt as far away as Baltimore and the Massachusetts-New Hampshire border. Thankfully, no life-threatening injuries or major damage were reported, and that includes all the machines in IBM’s Poughkeepsie facility, as you can read about in our Top Story below. This natural near-catastrophe is a good reminder that physically securing your machines is just as important as the data inside them. We’ve got some more industry news and events for you to catch u ..read more

As we continue to “play ketchup” after the Easter holiday and have two issues of the IBM i PTF Guide this week, three is the actual magic number as we once again have three security vulnerabilities and an oddity that we became aware of over the weekend for the IBM i software stack. We will start with the security holes, as we always do. First, we have Security Bulletin: IBM WebSphere Application Server could provide weaker than expected security (CVE-2023-50313), which you can find out more about at this link. The affected versions include WebSphere Application Server 8.5 and … The post IBM i ..read more