THE FOUR HUNDRED - Power Systems & IBM i Insights

1. Shaking The IBM i Magic Eight Ball For 2026

   After one more trip around the Sun, the IBM i community is back at it for another turn. What will become of our favorite box in 2026, let alone the people who work on it? That is not easy to say. As the great ballplayer/philosopher Yogi Berra once said: “It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.” But we try anyway.

   We kick off 2026 IBM i predictions with some targeted insight from Bill Langston, director of marketing, New Generation Software:

   “I feel like 2026 will be a quiet year with the most adventurous IBM i customers …

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2. IBM Power Offsite Data Protection That Fits The Way IBM i Shops Already Work

   For decades, IBM Power systems have supported some of the most critical systems of record in the global economy. Banking, insurance, healthcare, retail, and government organizations all rely on IBM i environments for stability, data integrity, and predictable operations. These are not necessarily the world’s flashiest workloads, but they are essential for keeping the lights on, transactions flowing, and making sure the trains run on time.

   Yet even in these well-managed environments, Offsite data protection remains a persistent challenge. Local backup and availability are rarely the issue. Most IBM Power shops have mature backup routines and, in many cases, high-availability …

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3. Guru: Access Client Solutions 1.1.9.11 – Security First, With Continued Investment In SQL Tooling

   Big Blue has released IBM i Access Client Solutions (ACS) version 1.1.9.11, and while the release is anchored by an important security fix, it also reflects IBM’s continued investment in the SQL tooling that has become central to day-to-day IBM i development and administration. This is not a feature-heavy update on its own, but it arrives after a series of releases that have steadily expanded the usefulness of both Run SQL Scripts and SQL Performance Center.

   The primary driver for upgrading to ACS 1.1.9.11 is the remediation of CVE-2025-66516, an XML External Entity vulnerability related to how ACS processes certain …

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4. It Looks Like 2026 Will Be a Good Year For Power-IBM i Upgrades

   We look forward every year to having our hands on the latest IBM i Marketplace Survey results, which are gathered in the fall and presented in January the following year. This is the 12th IBM i Marketplace Survey, and we never forget that it was our own Dan Burger who talked to Tom Huntington at HelpSystems, now Forta, to get the survey started. We do our part to try to get you all to take the survey and we use it as grist for our models of the base, which we also share with you.

   This being a new year …

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5. IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 28, Number 4

   Big Blue is changing its IP addresses for important stuff once again, and that makes this change a High Impact/Pervasive or HIPER issue for IBM i shops. So, customers have to prepare firewalls and proxies for the upcoming infrastructure changes on IBM Fix Central system, which you can read about more at this link. Public internet IP address are changing for the IBM servers that support internet delivery of fixes and updates for customer system’s software, hardware, and operating system. Hostnames are not changing. IBM will complete the implementation of the infrastructure improvements to electronic fix distribution by March …

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