The need for multi-factor authentication (MFA) has never been higher, as cybercriminals continue to compromise corporate and governmental systems to steal data and hold systems for ransom. That market need has led Raz-Lee Security to add several new features to its MFA solution that should help its customers stop, or at least significantly slow, unauthorized access to IBM i. Raz-Lee Security has sold MFA as part of its comprehensive iSecurity suite for several years, going back at least to December 2021, according to the company’s release notes for the product. With this month’s update to Raz ..read more

Access Client Solutions (ACS) users who are tired of waiting for database fields to resolve in the Run SQL Scripts (RSS) facility will be happy to hear that IBM felt their pain and RSS will return data much more quickly to return data with ACS version 1.1.9.5, which IBM shipped earlier this month. The speed-up of field resolution time was listed as a concern to at least one IBM i user, who took to IBM Power Ideas Portal to voice his or her concern. “Simply put the resolution of potential field makes content assist almost unusable,” the user wrote. “I … The post IBM Cranks Up the Performance fo ..read more

In this world, there are always more than two ways to skin a cat, but the best way to skin any cat is the way you already know how to do it. The same is true of application development from within a DevOps toolchain. When modernizing development processes on IBM i, the most efficient thing to do, always, is to make use of enterprise tools already in place within the organization and integrate these into a cohesive IBM i workflow that shepherds code from idea to production all along the way. It may seem obvious to say so, but trust … The post DevOps Means Using The Tools You Already Have Better ..read more

Million, billion, trillion. The way these words get thrown around has made us desensitized to what they really mean. But we did stop short when we saw a story asking if IBM could become a trillion-dollar stock by 2030. You will have to read the top headline below to see how realistic of a goal that is, but if Nvidia, Microsoft, and Apple can do it, why couldn’t Big Blue? Read on to consider that, and get the rest of the headlines of the week. Plus, don’t miss our growing Chats, Webinars, Seminars, Shows, and Other Happenings section. There are … The post Four Hundred Monitor, April 24 appeared ..read more

The latest release of Rocket’s change management tool for IBM i brings several new capabilities, including improved support for VS Code and Free Form RPG. Rocket DevOps version 10.3.1 also brings better code testing capabilities and will help companies comply with new regulations, such as the EU’s Digital Operations Resilience Act (DORA). Rocket Software added support for the browser-based development environment VS Code last fall with the launch of Rocket DevOps version 10.2.2. Customers will find the new release of Rocket DevOps improves on that initial VS Code support, says Puneet Kohli, th ..read more

If there is a large group of IT customers who pay a premium for a premium product but who are also going to be experiencing a skills shortage in the coming years, then you want to be in the position of selling them networking, compute, and storage capacity in the cloud or in co-location facilities. And you also want to be able to sell them add-on managed services to get a bigger share of their overall budget while also helping them to get more things done. That, in a nutshell, is why LightEdge Solutions is acquiring Connectria Hosting. Both companies … The post LightEdge Acquires Connectria To ..read more

Having a college degree is certainly one path to having a career in IT. But it’s not the only one, a point that Kisco Systems president Justin Loeber is making with the latest round of the Richard C. Loeber Fellowship, which is now accepting applications. It’s not that Justin Loeber is adamantly opposed to college degrees. After all, the current Kisco Systems owner eventually received a diploma in environmental science and public policy, which he called “a passion play.” But his father, Rich Loeber, never got a college degree. Despite proving his worth in data processing at a railroad and … Th ..read more

The adoption of generative AI by enterprises and the acceleration of the rates of use of IT services from outside consultants to get stuff done is going to boost IT spending higher than expected this year, according to the prognosticators at Gartner. In terms of aggregate dollars, the effect if the latter is much larger than the former. The broad IT services category is now expected to account for $1,520 billion in spending worldwide this year, up 9.7 percent compared to last year and representing a $19 billion increase from the forecast that Gartner made in January. It will not … The post Gar ..read more

It is an interesting time out there in PTF Land, so brace yourself. There are four security bulletins and two security warnings about potential denial of service vulnerabilities. Let’s do the security bulletins first and then the denial of service issues. First, we have Security Bulletin: IBM i Access Client Solutions is vulnerable to an infinite loop or out of memory error due to vulnerabilities in Apache Commons Compress, which you can find out more about at this link. The affected product(s) include IBM i Access Family versions 1.1.2 – 1.1.4, and versions 1.1.4.3 – 1.1.9.4. The issue can ..read more

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