THE FOUR HUNDRED - Power Systems & IBM i Insights

1. Power Systems Turns In Another Great Quarter

   We have been saying for some time that we think that Big Blue can get the Power Systems hardware business, including servers and operating systems but not including various kinds of tech support, to rise above $2 billion in annual sales. And by all indications, now that IBM has turned in three of the four quarters for the year, it looks like 2026 will indeed be that year.

   “Storage delivered record revenue growth and continue to gain market share with broad-based demand across Flash, Fusion, tape and IBM Z storage,” explained James Kavanaugh, IBM’s chief financial officer, explained on a …

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2. Big Blue Is Right On Schedule With Fall 2026 IBM i Tech Refreshes

   After delaying the spring Technology Refreshes for three months earlier this year, IBM is back on track with the fall TRs. IBM i shops will find a raft of new capabilities in the newly announced IBM i 7.6 TR3 and 7.5 TR9, including new services for tracking security patches, performance improvements for networking and storage, and sundry other improvements up and down and across the stack.

   Big Blue announced IBM i 7.6 TR3 and IBM i 7.5 TR9 on October 27, and plans to deliver the new capabilities and updates on November 20, although some components of the announcement will …

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3. Guru: Environment Variables – Global Variables Wearing Hiking Boots

   Sometimes a program knows one tiny piece of information that another program, several calls farther down the stack, needs to know.

   The obvious solution is to add another parameter. But sometimes that requires that new parameter added to one or more programs in the call stack. Before long, we’re passing a mushroom basket through half the forest even though most of the programs along the way have no interest in what’s inside it.

   There is another option that has been available on IBM i for a very long time: environment variables. IBM i supports both job-level and system-level environment variables. …

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4. A New IBM i Entity Takes Shape: Power By Fortra

   Attendees of the COMMON NAViGATE conference last week were able to catch a glimpse of a new organization making its way in the IBM i world: Power by Fortra. The entity is not a separate company from Fortra. Rather, it’s a virtual carveout of sorts of all of Fortra’s IBM i products as well as its IBM i-focused employees. And according to Power by Fortra general manager Geoff Fischer, it’s here to stay.

   “We’re still a part of Fortra,” Fischer told IT Jungle in a recent interview about Power by Fortra rebrand. “We’re still a business unit within Fortra. Nothing …

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5. IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 28, Number 38

   Welcome to this week, where the IBM i platform has two issues you need to be aware of as well as a security bulletin. Yup, we said “a” there, meaning only one, meaning it looks like people were out trick or treating instead of bug hunting. Which is fine.

   The first issue is related to Access Client Services. IBM has put out a note that warns: “Versions 1.1.9.1 through 1.1.9.16 are vulnerable to memory exhaustion via a malicious SFTP server sending unsolicited replies. The SFTP client (Apache MINA SSHD) did not verify that incoming replies corresponded to previously sent requests …

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